External Western Digital Hard Drive

[brophyd]

I have an external Western Digital USB hard drive that recently has seemed to die. When it is plugged into the AC outlet, it sounds like it is running, but when I connect it to any USB port on any computer it won't be detected (show up in the drives list in explorer). After a while the activity light will light and stay on too.

This is self-contained unit bought from a store, not an enclosure for internal hard drives. What can I do to retrieve data off of this USB drive? Any help will be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Ste]

If its still under warranty, take it back to the place you bought and explain your sitaution and problem.

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

When it is plugged in, do you see it in the device manager window under hard drives?

(to get to device manager:
start >> setting >> control pannel >> system >> hardware tab >> device manager button >> hard drives)

Does the name of that device show up on your hardware tree?
Are all your usb drivers installed and working correctly?
Have you tried plugging it in on a different pc, and seeing if it works on that pc?

I hope one of these suggestions helps.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

If you extract the drive form the encloser wihtout destroying the enclose, put that IDE drive in your puter as a slave and see if the data is still present. It may be the controller chip in the USB external case and not the drive itself.

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

If he were to do that, I would expect the warentee to be voided. If the warentee is past, then I would suggest that as the last option.

 

[Ste]

If he were to do that, I would expect the warentee to be voided. If the warentee is past, then I would suggest that as the last option.

Very true which is why you should RMA it. Unfortunatly you probably can't recover your Data how rico sucggested because it would Viod warranty and thus you can
t get a new one.

In the future you should by a separte 3.5" Drive and an Enclosure so you can just RMA the drive and not the whole thing. Doing this would also allow you to take it out of the enclosure and attempt data recoverry.

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

Does the name of that device show up on your hardware tree?
Are all your usb drivers installed and working correctly?
Have you tried plugging it in on a different pc, and seeing if it works on that pc?

I would suggest going through the process I had described before giving up and returning the drive.