Hello,

Yes, I know IT guys, it must get boring at times, but hey, you did go to all of that school right???

Ok, here goes....

I have a Western Digital External Hard Drive that I purchased from Best Buy approx. 2 years ago. (I bought this when my old computers HD crashed and I thankfully was able to recover the files to back them up.)

I back up my files periodically, maybe every month or so, I really dont do alot of computer work, just pictures mostly. So, I went to back up some pics I had taken and my HD is not acting right.

I plug it in and turn it on, the LED turns on with the on/off switch. however it does not spin, doesnt make any noise and just plain old doesnt work! The computer obviously does not find it through the USB cable. I have reset it multiple times and it still does the same thing.

Please, please, please help! This thing has so many pictures that mean so very much to me!!! Should I take this thing to Best Buy? My major concern is that the information can be pulled and placed onto my computer or another HD, but as of right now, I guess I have no way of knowing if it is safe or still there!

So, any advice is appreciated!

Thanks for your help!

 

Bummer. If it doesn't spin (are you sure/how can you tell?) then you are out of luck.

Doubt Best Buy will be able to help you.

One trick I've presonally had work is to freeze you're HDD for a couple hours and then try it. The one I had worked for about 20 minutes after that. No garuantee, and it's for sure toast after you try it. You can pay data retrival companies $$$$$ if you really need the data off the drive.

Edit: Maybe it's a bad cable?

 

Most Best Buys have the Geek Squad right in their facilities. They can come right to your house a check it.

 

I suggest this as a last resort, but external hard drives are nothing but an internal drive packaged in a box with USB connection and power. You could take the drive out of the box and install it internally in the computer to see if it is a problem with the drive itself or the external case set up.

 

Uninstall the driver for the external disk unit. This should force the pc to "find" the unit & load a driver.
I am ASSUMING you connect & power up the external disk unit the same way each time ?????

 

Wow....I outdid myself this time....

The power supply for my lap top looks very similar to the one for my EHD. I was using the batteries on my computer and was using the lap top pwer supply to run the EHD, which obviously didnt work....

So, now that it is plugged in correctly with the right power supply, all is well!

Thanks to all whom offered advice!!!

 

NEVERMIND>>>

 

Come on Vader, what were you going to say.

 

That you were right and giving details about how I had the same thing and ways to use Linux to mount it will protecting the data's integrity...

 

Glad you agree, I though maybe I screwed something up. I have looked into building my own external, you can buy the boxes, but none of the extra drives I had were big enough for what I wanted to do.
Please leave that kind of info there. Never too old to learn something new.
I am glad the problem was just the interface between the seat and the keyboard.