Nutty external hd

[Linda G]

Well, again, it's a hard drive problem. I do have most of it backed up, but now that it's crashed, I'm not so sure.

It's a western digital in an external casing. I plug it in and the computer recognizes something in the usb port but the drive never shows up.

I hear something, is it the fan or the drive and how can I tell the difference?

And, the big question, what now?

[rekhon]

suposedly the hard drive noise is a litle lor, like crr, grr or something in that area :crazy: the fan is a continous sound... wossssssss.

First of all check cables
Second check on another computer
third, remove hard drive from enclosure and plug in IDE or SATA (try a test computer) and see if you can acces the contents, if you can the enclosure its bye bye. if the hard doesnt work, oh well data recovery and a new one should put you back in business!

[Linda G]

Well, I've tried it on three different computers and two sets of usb cords so that's out.

I do think it's spinning as I found a switch to turn the fan off and I still hear whirring.

Now to get it into a different computer...feeling wimpy and incapable today.

As for data recovery, you say that like it's not totally out of this world expensive!

Thanks for the reply. I'll take it to work and see about connecting it to one of those computers, they're easier to access.

[Linda G]

Okay, took it to work, hooked it up to a trusty-dusty W2k machine and all is there. Am writing cds and will get a new casing for it and be back in business!

Thanks!

[Swampy]

Did you map any new network drives recently? If so, it may be interfering with the USB drive, especially if it wasn't plugged in when the network drive was mapped.

You could also look at Disk Management by right clicking on My Computer, selecting Manage, then clicking on Disk Management in the tree on the left.

With the drive already plugged in, you could check that all disks have drive letters or all disks have drive letters that are different from any network drive mappings.

You may see a bunch of "Missing" drives which would be other USB type drives that were used previously on that computer that aren't plugged in at the time and you can ignore these.