External Hard Drive suddenly not being recognized.

[MelpomeneTears]

I had a 2TB external hard drive connected to my computer.  The external hard drive is a Fantom Green Drive.  The computer it was connected to was my MSI GT660R-004.  It has 2 500GB drives and a core i7, my operating system is windows 7.  On the computer are 2 video games a couple movies 2 music albums and photoshop elements 7 along with 7-zip.

Previously I had the hard drive connected to my Vaio vgn-nw350f it also has windows 7.

I had information on a 500 gb hard drive previously but wanted something bigger, so I moved all the information to my Fantom drive.  When I got the MSI I wanted to put the files on there as well so I would have it on my computer and the external hard drive would be a back up.  The information was no long on the 500 GB hard drive as I gave it to my husband.

As I was copying stuff to the MSI the computer suddenly said the device was no longer connected.  I checked all the cords, power cord was fine the drive was powered up and I could still here it spinning.  So I checked the usb cord, it seemed fine but I tried a different one just in case, the computer didn't recognize the drive at all.  I tried a different usb port and still nothing. 

I connected it to my vaio to see if there was a problem with the MSI.  The vaio said there was a usb device connected but didn't seem to recognize what it was.  There was nothing showing for the drive under My Computer.

I decided to power down the drive while I tried to find answers but as I turned it off windows suddenly popped up saying Drive L needs to be formatted, but the power to the drive was already off.  Thinking I perhaps didn't wait long enough for the drive to be recognized I restarted my computer in safe mode and powered the external drive back on.  I left it for 15 minutes but the drive never showed up the entire time, yet when I powered it off I got the same message.

I have no idea what could be wrong with it and I'm sure you can understand it's frustrating.  The Fantom drive is only about 1 year old.  There are some pictures on there that I have no other copies of, they were the entire reason I was putting them on the MSI to have second copy Just in case.  It just figures doesn't it?   

If anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it.  I really can't afford the $500+ for a data recovery service.  Thank you for you help!

[Geek-9pm]

Sorry I can not help you. This kind of problem is more common than people realize. There is, as far as I know, not exact embracing answer.

Do not format the drive. Under some conditions the drive will be accessible again. The USB interface is not stable for large drives. Perhaps the information can be recovered by just trying another computer.

On suggestion. Leave the computer and the external drive off-power for a few hours. Then power the external drive first, then power the computer. Wait a about 5 min to see if the computer now can recognize the external drive correctly.

[Lumpy44]

This stuff can be a huge pain. Leaving it alone and coming back to see if it connects sometimes works.
Try the hard drive on a different comp it hasnt been attached to before
Go to Device Manager and delete it and see if it reintalls the drivers.
Trying tons of different stuff and quickly copying once it does is about the best you can do.
Sorry man, Drive eat Drive world out there.

[Transfusion]

You might want to try http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk to recover lost partitions and the data that was in them.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822204079
Doesn't seem like a Tier-1 drive manufacturer to me, especially judging from this review:

Pros: Price, storage capacity, rebate, nice-looking aluminum enclosure. Mine contained a Western Digital Caviar Green drive.
Cons: The unit eventually died. I was forced to choose to either send the whole thing for service and risk losing my data, or void the warranty by removing the sticker over the enclosure screws.
Pretty stupid to have to make that choice when it's just a standard OEM drive and a normal enclosure. I buy and swap internal HDDs all the time; this one was no different.
Other Thoughts: I chose to void the warranty and open the unit. It was never dropped and always treated well, so fortunately the WD hard disk was completely intact with all my data.
It was Fantom's enclosure that failed! And now they won't service it without a fee. So bad hardware + bad policy = 1 egg.
Also the unit came with a 2-cable transformer box (so no wall-wart!), but my girlfriend ordered one and it DID have a wall-wart, so YMMV.

Yeah try what this person did: use a different HDD enclosure and see if the drive is detected. This enclosure looks good:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392002