External USB HD - is not recognized anymore??

[sky jumper]

Hello:

I'm hoping someone can help me. I have a 160gb Seagate external USB HD that I use as backup and extra storage. I've had it almost 2 years and it has always worked great. Recently I was dumping a bunch of data to it, and the whole system froze in the middle of the transfer - it seemed to get stuck on a strange ~.tmp file. I shut down the system, disconnected the drive, and rebooted. Now the External drive is not recognized when I connect it - nothing happens.

- I have tried connecting it to other computers, but no luck. same thing.
- I have successfully connected a different external USB drive to my computer without any problems.
- the drive does start up and spin, but does not respond when I connect it.
- the drive is a pre-packaged external (not an internal HD stuffed into an external enclosure - not sure if that matters).

Any advice?? I'm mostly concerned with getting my data off the drive. I'm thinking about taking the drive out and putting in an IDE slot on my desktop to see if I can retreive the data -- not sure how to do this, or if it will work. don't even know if it has an IDE interface inside.

Thanks in advance for you help!!

sky jumper

[Bluefish]

Hi Sky Jumper!
Welcome to PC Help Forum!

I'm afraid you have some serious problems with this thing.
First, do not try to take the drive out as there's no IDE connection inside.
Secondly, it looks like you've already tried the thing you were able to do.
To me it seems that your harddrive has come loose. I'd suggest you to get to the store where you bought the drive and ask what they can do for you. There are ways to recover these files (if that's really important), but they're usually very expensive. If it's not necessary for you to get you're files back, you will perhaps be able to exchange your drive for a new one.
Perhaps someone else has suggestions, but this is my point of view.

Bluefish

[sky jumper]

ok - I checked and it does show up in device manager with an error message "This device cannot start. (Code 10)". I've uninstalled it, and reinstalled it per the troubleshooter, but no luck. same error code.

it does not show up in disk manager.

[sky jumper]

Originally Posted by Bluefish

Hi Sky Jumper!
Welcome to PC Help Forum!

I'm afraid you have some serious problems with this thing.
First, do not try to take the drive out as there's no IDE connection inside.
Secondly, it looks like you've already tried the thing you were able to do.
To me it seems that your harddrive has come loose. I'd suggest you to get to the store where you bought the drive and ask what they can do for you. There are ways to recover these files (if that's really important), but they're usually very expensive. If it's not necessary for you to get you're files back, you will perhaps be able to exchange your drive for a new one.
Perhaps someone else has suggestions, but this is my point of view.

Bluefish

ok, thanks Bluefish. unfortunately I bought it on eBay so it looks like I'm SOL.

[Bluefish]

That's a shame. You could try to contact Seagate, and ask what they can do for you. It's worth a try I think.

[sky jumper]

update - I took it apart and the drive inside actually does have an IDE interface. the drive appears to be a standard Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB Ultra ATA drive. there was a module attached to it that had an IDE plug, power plug, and all of the USB and firewire ports, as well as some internal PC boards and logic, etc. after the module was removed it is just a regular Seagate hard drive.

next question - can I just install this drive into my old ATX win98 machine's secondary IDE port and retreive my data? thanks!

[joe5]

Yup , you can just hook it up as a slave drive. But if the HD itself is damaged and not the external enclosure , then it might still not work to get any data from it. Its always worth a try ofcourse.