External Harddrive

[LOTUS1324]

Goodafternoon gentlemen, I have a very serious problem with my external hard drive. It all started when i tried to burn some music off of it to have as backups. All of a suden the pc started to freeze. I re-installed xp thinking it was a driver problem but it wasn't. Now when i connect it the device manager it shows the device to be working properly but it does not appear in "my computer"., and when i try to open my browser or anything thing else for that matter nothing will come up, as soon as i disconnect the hard drive everything i tried to access suddenly appears. Any body please help me i have alot of important docs in it. Sorry for the long paragraph thank you anyone. It is the WD2500jb External hard drive.

[patio]

How is the drive being reported in Disk Management ? ?
Right clik My Computer, select manage and then Disk Management.
Right clik the drive and select properties for the details...

[LOTUS1324]

Thx for responding. Well the drive is not present in the disk management. It is only present in the device manager.

[LOTUS1324]

It read it now, but the management freezes. As soon as i unplug it goes back to normal. I tried it several times now and to no avail. It freezes before i even click on the drive. May i suggest taking the driveout of the external case and testing it out with an ide cable?

[LOTUS1324]

??

[LOTUS1324]

Anything gents?

[Kurtiskain]

Wow this seems to be a huge pickle...I wouldn't suggest taking it out of the case but it may be a option if not sorted out soon Does it make any weird noises or vibrations when the drive first powers up? My friend has a really wierd external drive that sounds so sick it's not funny. Also, check whether any other Pen/USB drives work, as it may be a USB port issue. Are you plugging the USB cable in before or after the Ex-HDD is switched on? if possible, switch it on and wait for it to spin up and initialize completely before plugging it in (could be up to 30 seconds)

of course it is very well possible it is simply dead and cannot read itself? One noise to look for is a sound that sounds like it is making small grinds every second or so, I have had many drives go this way where it cannot read itself so it continually tries to read that small file, and I would find leaving it to grind over night managed to open the drive and every click I made started the grinding all over again.

If it is a silent casing this may be why it seems so mysterious

Kurtis

[NCPRIUS]

I recently installed a WD external hard drive and my computer had the same "recognition" problem. Although I can't remember specifically what update I downloaded from the WD website, it worked. WD has a large array of fixes at their website. Hope this helps.

[LOTUS1324]

Thx for the responses. The hard drive does not make any wierd noises at all. It doesnt seem to be dead, beacause when i connect it to my xbox 360 it reads everything and i can play all my music off of it. I tried it in all usb ports and still nothing.

[patio]

Thx for responding. Well the drive is not present in the disk management. It is only present in the device manager.

How does Device Manager report it if you right clik it and select Properties ? ?

[LOTUS1324]

It reports it fine, working properly. One thing i did notice in the disk management when i plugged it in is that it shows the full capacity of the harddrive with with 100% free space as if there is nothing on the drive. When i connect it to my xbox it shows me all my files including my music and it plays it fine.

[Kurtiskain]

Ok the only other thing is to check another flash disk, you *may* need to simply reinstall your USB drivers by uninstalling the Device drivers from Device manager and rebooting

[LOTUS1324]

Didn't work.

[patio]

Was this the iTunes software that you used for the music by any chance ? ?

When you re-installed XP did you remember to re-install your MBoard drivers ? ?

Have you tried the drive on another machine to retrieve your data ? ?

The above should be tried before attempting the procedure below:
Your best hope for retrieving that data would be to carefully remove the drive from the case ( NOTE: This will void any Warranty from WD ) and set it as a slave drive and hook it up to the middle IDE connector...
You should also check your main drives jumpers as well as some require a "master w/slave present" setting.
Re-boot...burn your data and then format the drive...power down reset the jumpers and re-assemble it into the external enclosure.

[LOTUS1324]

Thank you for you r expert advise Patio. I have tried everything you advised but test it on another pc. I will bring it to work tommorrow and test it out. If that doesn't work i will have to open the drive. The only thing is that the drive doesn't have any screws i will have to pry it open and risk the possibility of breaking the case. If that's the only way then i will definitely do that. One more thing i brought the drive last november i believe it has a one year manufacturers warranty, but i have no reciept. I will go on their website and investigate. Will they be able to retrieve the data free of charge if still under warranty? Thank You again.