Recuva right tool to get files from Hard Drive

[Andreee]

Hello,

i wanted to access my wd hard drive. However it is not possible anymore.
When I open my file Browser, i can see my local hard drive (usb3.0, already tried different cables).
It is spinning, however I cannot access it.
When i open the windows disk management, the disk does not appear.
with chkdsk M: /f /r i can see that it is NFTS. However in phase 2 it seems to be stopping  after 53685 from 57944 analysis records (92%).

Also Recuva is unable to open the drive.

What else can I do? Does anyone of you know such a problem?

[nukecad]

Recuva would be among the last options I would try in a case like this.

You say that it's a WD but it would help if you can also tell us the  model, and size of the drive.*

Did chkdsk abort with an error, or did it just seem to be 'stuck'?
Sometimes chkdsk can take a very long time, especially with large capacity drives, and although it looks to be stuck is still working and will eventually finish.
So if it was just stuck then you may want to try chkdsk again and this time leave it for much longer when it seems to be doing nothing.

I have used Recuva successfully to recover the undeleted files from drives that have become 'RAW' (no file table) so have had to be reformatted as NTFS, but you say that yours is showing as 'NTFS' (which means it does still have a file table) and so there may well be an easier fix.

As you do have a drive letter 'M:' then it may be that the file table is corrupted.

For that I would use the free MiniTool Partition Wizard, here is their guide for fixing a file table
There is a download button on the page to get the tool.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/disk-recovery/corrupt-master-file-table.html

If you have no luck with the suggestions in that guide then come back and we can talk about reformatting the drive then using Recuva to get the undeleted files back.

*One further question:
The drive designation 'M:' is usually/often used for a shared drive, eg. shared by multiple users in a company or educational setting.
This wouldn't happen to be a 'NAS' (Network Attached Storage) drive would it?
You can buy these for home use, (WD sell various NAS drives), but they are designed to work differently from regular hard drives.
Of course you may just have used M: for a regular drive, the use of drive letters is a convention and not set in stone.