External hard drive very slow to load after dropping it and can't be repaired with Disk Utility
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that external hard disk drive is most likely damaged beyond repair.
I was using my WD HDD, it fell off my corner.
This is physical damage. No software can fix this. This is like totaling your car and then trying to fix it by changing your oil or using better gas.
I fixed the thing, I plugged it into the Mac and it loads the HDD but it's very very very very slow.
It sounds like there was actual damage that you had to repair, but aside from that, there are two components to an external USB drive:
- USB controller which is the bridge between the USB bus and the SATA disk drive
- The SATA disk drive
From what you describe, the Mac is "seeing" the controller, but when it tries to access it, things go "wrong." This would be consistent with a damaged hard drive.
The only thing you can realistically do now is hope that you have backups/copies of what was on that drive.
Others have pointed out that your drive is doomed. They are correct.
You may be able to get some data off the drive before you trash it.
If your data is priceless and you have no backup, unplug the drive and contact a drive recovery service like http://resquoo.me/ for help. Don't plug in the drive if your info is priceless; you may damage it further.
If you want to try recovering the data yourself here are some things you can do.
- plug it in and copy the data, most valuable first.
- once you've done your best with that, stick the drive in a freezer overnight, making it very cold. Then plug it in and try copying more data. That may help.
- warm it up to about 110F (40C) and try again.
Probably try removing the hard drive from the enclosure and connecting some other way (i.e. another enclosure, or into the motherboard). You might get lucky.