My Book Essential 1TB is failing (mac)

Hello, I’ve had an external My Book Essential hard drive for several months. I’ve always used it on my MacBook Pro. Although I also have a PC, I never formated in a way that allowed the PC to also read it, so I just use it on my Mac.

Recently I connected it and after a few minutes the Mac gave the error message that occurs when you don’t properly eject a disk. The drive icon was gone from the desktop.

I plugged it again and the Mac asked me if I wanted to format the drive. Of course I chose not to (as I have a lot of sentimental-value content in it) and disconnected it.

I waited about 15 minutes, plugged it again and I was releived that it did read it, and it did show my files. I opened a file, and I started browsign and it had been a few minutes and again got the Mac disk error message.

I waited a few days, tried again today and same as above happened.

At this point I don’t mind the drive, but really want to recover my files.

Any tips? I’d greatly appreciate any help, thank you!

The files might be corrupted, try using a data recovery program to recover the files. You can also try running a test with the Disk Utility.

thank you for the advice!  Hadn’t been back after my initial post (I thought I’d get an email notification but didn’t)… just saw this as I’m going to bed but will try this tomorrow and report back, thanks again!

so…sadly some days ago I again turned on the drive/plugged it to my MacBook Pro, it came up, i was about to follow the suggestion of using the Disk Utility function, but then the drive went off, got the Mac error message. After that i tried waiting and plugging again but this time it didn’t read it.

I waited till the next day, tried again and it didn’t read it.

I then waited a few days and just now tested again and nothing :frowning:

What would be the best to take if I want to try and recover my files?

Advice greatly appreciated, thanks