Topic: Wii U hard drive failure, or how Christmas 2017 was ruined

So I had my brother visiting for Christmas and he wanted to play some BOTW before lunch a couple of days ago. I boot up the Wii U and the game itself and I get a message that there is not enough space for the update.I knew BOTW's updates and saves were all in the external 2 TB hard drive so that was weird. I go into system settings only to find out that the HDD was not recognised, even though it looked as if it was on. I tried everything I could find online, disconnected and reconnected the HDD to the console (while it was off). I connected the HDD to my laptop, where it's recognised as an external device but obviously due to the Wii U encryption it's not usable. The laptop also said that the device is functioning properly. I have no idea what's going on, I had tens of games, updates, and save data in that hard drive, and while I can redownload the games and updates,the loss of all these saves have cause me immense sadness. I know Tom wrote an article about a year ago about that but in his case he decided not to buy another hard drive. I probably will but I want to exhaust all options in saving that one. If it helps, it's a Seagate expansion, one of the recommended ones by Nintendo themselves, powered by an AC adapter and all and I've had it a little over two years which means it's out of warranty. Anyone ever have any similar experience?

Harddrives should always stay in the same position (especially when travelling) because of their sensitive magnetic storage. Too much irritation by kinetic influence or magnetic fields corrupts the data on it.

Think of it as a gyro motion sensor that you wanna hold still at any time.
Yeah, think of it as a bomb. Move it too fast or turn it to the side and it explodes.
Leave it in its standard state and try to not shake it the slightest for maximum life force.

@SKTTR I always move around my laptop when it's on. My previous laptop lasted eight years, and I only got a new one because it looked old and fat. My current laptop is three years old, and it still works fine, so I'm not where you got that from.

@SKTTR It's been in the same position for more than two years, this cannot be it. The weird part as I've already said is the fact that it's recognised by my laptop, so it's not completely dead yet.

@Octane SKTTR is right, however, most Laptops have gyroscopes and software to stop the hard drive from running if the laptop is moving to fast, which is why you don't see an issue there. Standalone hard drives don't have that sort of protection.