Issues with usb hdd

[victor mayman]

I have a 250 gb Maxtor HDD I’m using as a storage disk with a usb enclosure. This setup has worked fine for about a year. Recently when I try to access anything on the storage disk, the program I access it with (including Windows Explorer) will hang up. I get an occasional message that the drive needs to be formatted with the option to select yes, to do it now. I have data on the disk I don’t want to loose. I tried to open the disk with Linux on CD with the same results as with Windows Vista Home Premium SP1. I tested another HD with the same usb setup and it works fine. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[patio]

How is the drive reported in Disk Management ? ?

Right clik My Computer and select Manage and then Disk Management...
Right clik the USB drive and select Properties and report back with your findings...
If it says RAW then it was unplugged prematurely without using "Safely Remove Hardware" and your data is gone...
Hopefully this is not the case.

[victor mayman]

The usb enclosure has a power button; I keep it off unless I need the disk, which had worked well before. Now when I use ANY system function to read the drive, including disk management, the program hangs. If I turn the power switch for the drive OFF, the program becomes responsive again. I get a message that says "the drive needs to be formatted before you can use it".

[patio]

I would suggest then to remove the drive from the enclosure and hook it up as a slave drive to an IDE middle connector and re-boot and see if it can be accessed thru Disk Management...
You may get lucky and find it's the enclosure going bad instead of the hard drive.

[victor mayman]

I already tried another hd in the usb enclosure as a test, and it worked fine. Is that an accurate test of the enclosure? I can try your suggestion as an alternative if the way I did it is less than definitive.

[quaxo]

I already tried another hd in the usb enclosure as a test, and it worked fine.

Sounds like you've lost a drive. If you want to be sure, follow Patio's advice though. But I think you'll find the results are the same.

[victor mayman]

I put the hd into the computer as you suggested, when I started the computer windows automatically ran chkdsk, fixed a lot of stuff, and now everything is fine. If I don’t start backing up now, I don’t deserve to get the data back. Thanks for your help.

[patio]

If I don’t start backing up now, I don’t deserve to get the data back. Thanks for your help

This is a very healthy way of looking at it...i highly recommend Acronis True Image for backup purposes...

[quaxo]

Glad to hear everything checked out ok. Always sucks losing a hard drive and data.

Regular backups are definitely worth it. Keep copies of any important school/work documents on a flash/thumb drive and update them regularly. For larger files such a movies or music, keep what you want on your computer, but make a regular archive of everything onto DVDs.