Drive Wiper killed my HDD?

[tecknotot]

So I have an external USB (WD My Book 6TB) and I used Drive Wiper on it (3 passes)  However, after it was done.  My drive disappeared and I can not format it or set it up via Disk Management.  Its gone.  I unplugged it and re-plugged it and it now does not show up at all.  Any help would be appreciated.  

[nukecad]

Drives can become unrecognisable for a number of reasons.

I'm not sure what has happened to yours; but 3 passes of a 6TB drive would take a bit of time to complete and if something interrupted or stopped it during the process then the file table may have become scrambled. (Power outage?, turned off the computer before it had finished?)

Or it's even possible that the drive has simply failed. Drives do fail, and when they do it's often when some intensive writing is going on.

I do note that the 'My Book' range seems to require a seperate power source to USB, so that power supply may be something to check.

Try this 'quick fix' first:

1. Unplug the drive from USB.
2. Click Start and begin typing devmgmt.msc the search should show you the Device Maganer.
3. Open Device Manager and expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
4. Right-click on the USB Root Hub  and select Properties.
5. Go to Power Management and uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.
6. Do a Restart of the computer, reconnect the WD external hard drive and check if if it's now being seen.

(Sometimes all it takes is unplugging the drive, Restarting the computer, replugging the drive - but it's worth doing the Device Manager setting as well).

If that doesn't work then try the fixes given here: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/external-drive-not-recognized-this-is-how-to-fix-it-in-windows/

Presumably as you were wiping the drive then there is no data on it that you want to keep?
That should make things easier and it may just need reformatting.

However if Windows can't see the drive at all then it can't format it.
WD do their own formatting tool for for external USB drives which may give you a shot: https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=34

PS. I've had it in the past that when Windows could not see a drive to format/partition it a 3rd party partition manager could do it, and once done Windows then had no issue seeing it again.
(Personally I prefer 'MiniTool Partition Wizard', there are others available).

Just in case you need any other WD utilities for the drive: https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detail/p/119#WD_downloads