Disk unable to intialize - Media is write protected

Question

Dear community,
My WD external harddrive has suddenly stopped working after coming from Europe. I plugged in the HD into my laptop and I noticed that it does not show up under My Computer, only under Safely Remove Hardware and Devices. So I searched forums a bit and a couple
have said that I should go to Disk Management and see if my drive is there. 
Turns out the HD is listed there, however as 'Disk 1: Unknown 1.379 GB, Not Intialized'. There is no blue bar either, it just says the size of the disk and that it is unallocated (it does not have a Volume letter).
When I start up Disk Management it gives me a notification:
Initialize Disk
You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it.
Select Disk:
Disk 1
Use the following partition style for the selected disks:
MBR (Master Boot Record)
GPT (GUID Partition Table)
So I click on MBR and press OK, and it gives me the error 'The media is write protected'.  
So I go into the registry under 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > System > CurrentControlSet > Control > StorageDevicePolicies
and change the value in 'writeprotect' to 0, and then I reboot my computer. Same error.
I can't even reformat the disk because I cannot find such option, not that I want to really, because I have 1.2 TB worth of data on there that I want to keep so losing the information on this Drive will be quite.... frustrating.
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Thanks a lot for your advice & effort. The same message "Diskpart failed to clear disk attributes".
Here is the file of $vds$.log (only a last part of the file). How can I attached the file, I can't find your email add.  thanks again.
(PID:3956,TID:4380,11:17:56.728) LEAVE OpenDevice()
(PID:3956,TID:3220,11:17:56.744) INFO: VDS(0X02040002): WM_DEVICECHANGE: wParam=8006 lParam=8125984
(PID:3956,TID:4380,11:17:56.759) ERROR: CVdsRawDiskLun::SetFlagsInternal, 4 Name=\\?\usbstor#disk&ven_wd&prod_elements_1023&rev_2005#6&2429694&0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}, Number=1, hr=80070013
(PID:3956,TID:3220,11:17:56.759) TRACE: VDS(0X02040007): Disk layout change notification received
(PID:3956,TID:4380,11:17:56.759) TRACE: EXIT CVdsRawDiskLun::SetFlagsInternal, Name=\\?\usbstor#disk&ven_wd&prod_elements_1023&rev_2005#6&2429694&0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}, Number=1, status=80070013
(PID:3956,TID:3220,11:17:56.775) ENTER CVdsPnPNotificationManager::ForwardLayoutChangeNotification()
(PID:3956,TID:4380,11:17:56.775) ERROR: CVdsRawDiskLun::ClearFlags, 2 Name=\\?\usbstor#disk&ven_wd&prod_elements_1023&rev_2005#6&2429694&0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}, Number=1, hr=800700B7
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.791) ENTER CVdsPnPNotificationManager::LayoutChangeNotificationHandler()
(PID:3956,TID:3220,11:17:56.791) LEAVE CVdsPnPNotificationManager::ForwardLayoutChangeNotification()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.791) ENTER CVdsService::OnDiskLayoutChange()
(PID:3956,TID:4380,11:17:56.791) TRACE: EXIT CVdsRawDiskLun::ClearFlags, Name=\\?\usbstor#disk&ven_wd&prod_elements_1023&rev_2005#6&2429694&0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}, Number=1, status=800700B7
(PID:3956,TID:4380,11:17:56.791) ERROR: CVdsDiskLun::ClearFlags, 4, hr=800700B7
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.806) ENTER CVdsRawDiskLun::GetProperties() (IVdsDisk)
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.806) ENTER OpenDevice()
(PID:3956,TID:4380,11:17:56.806) LEAVE CVdsDiskLun::ClearFlags
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.822) INFO: OpenDevice:, 1, \\?\PhysicalDrive1
(PID:3956,TID:3220,11:17:56.822) INFO: VDS(0X02040002): WM_DEVICECHANGE: wParam=8006 lParam=8125956
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.822) LEAVE OpenDevice()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.837) ENTER IsDiskClustered()
(PID:3956,TID:3220,11:17:56.837) TRACE: TMP: GUID_IO_VOLUME_MOUNT event received.
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.837) INFO: vdsutil::IsDiskClustered, NOT CLUSTERED
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.853) INFO: vdsutil::IsDiskClustered, ONLINE
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.853) LEAVE IsDiskClustered()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.853) ENTER IsDiskReadOnly()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.869) INFO: vdsutil::IsDiskReadOnly, disk is writable
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.869) LEAVE IsDiskReadOnly()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.884) ENTER IsDiskCurrentStateReadOnly()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.884) WARNING: IsDiskCurrentStateReadOnly, 2, error=1
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.900) LEAVE IsDiskCurrentStateReadOnly()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.900) LEAVE CVdsRawDiskLun::GetProperties() (IVdsDisk)
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.915) ENTER OpenDevice()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.915) INFO: OpenDevice:, 1, \\?\usbstor#disk&ven_wd&prod_elements_1023&rev_2005#6&2429694&0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.931) LEAVE OpenDevice()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.931) ENTER GetDiskLayout()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.947) ERROR: GetDiskLayout: DeviceIoControl failed: 13
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.947) LEAVE GetDiskLayout()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.947) ERROR: CVdsService::OnDiskLayoutChange, 7, path=\\?\usbstor#disk&ven_wd&prod_elements_1023&rev_2005#6&2429694&0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}, 19
(PID:3956,TID:5716,11:17:56.962) ENTER CVdsService::RemoveObjectFromMap()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.962) LEAVE CVdsService::OnDiskLayoutChange()
(PID:3956,TID:5716,11:17:56.978) LEAVE CVdsService::RemoveObjectFromMap()
(PID:3956,TID:5792,11:17:56.978) LEAVE CVdsPnPNotificationManager::LayoutChangeNotificationHandler()
(PID:3956,TID:5716,11:17:56.978) ENTER CVdsDiskLun::~CVdsDiskLun()
(PID:3956,TID:5716,11:17:56.993) LEAVE CVdsDiskLun::~CVdsDiskLun()