[chilloutcolin]

I read the thread below but my problem seems to be something different...I have a 250gb external harddrive which I put pretty much everything useful I have onto, so fixing this is very important to me...My external harddrive was working fine for ages but recently after leaving it disconnected for a while when i plugged it in nothibg was recognised...the blue light on the harddrive lights up and it hums like normal but thats it...nothing pops up on the screen...the device manager doesnt find it...and i cant run a disk check.

My hope is that maybe its just the cable that is broken but I cant test it as I have no other firewire cable...has this happened to anyones cable and if so what were the symptoms?

My fear is that while disconnected the harddrive was knocked around by someone and something has broken internally...if this is the case ,is there anyway I can recover my data or any professional I can send it to who can do it for me?

Any advice or help is very welcome,
thanks Colin

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

If device manager doesn't recognise and you say you havnt used it for a while its unlikely but possible that theres new drivers, firmware or fixes etc. that you need to download and then it will work.. :S ...... its a small pin sized hole of hope (say that quickly five times..) but it may work.

[kanoakavirus]

This happend to my scanner, never did fix it, neither did i find any helpful answers.

[philthomas]

Try removing the drive from the enclosure and slaving it to your PC. If it's a problem with the enclosure circuitry or cables, this will allow you retrieve the data.

[chilloutcolin]

Eh updated all my drivers (well most) and no fix so sadly its not that...Opening it up to connect directly to computer will probably be my last resort because this probably voids the warranty,does it? ...I went onto the WD site and they have a list of data recovery places I can go to without voiding the warranty...I'll ring them tomorrow to try and get some sort of price..sucks having to pay to get data back I should'nt have lost in the first place but if it isnt ridiculously expensive it would be worth it not to have to go about getting my gigabytes of music...photos...videos and games back....Thanks for the replys guys.

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

Originally Posted by kanoakavirus This happend to my scanner, never did fix it, neither did i find any helpful answers.

So why post?!?

[Sharpfluffy]

I am having the exact same problem with my WD 250g device. I plug it into my lap top, it starts to spin up, light on an all, and then the computer makes a quick 3 ding noise, like when disconnecting a usb drive, but quicker. I can't find the drive anywhere on the computer, and after the 3 ding noise, it stops spinning, despite the light for power being on.

Recently I had a trojan virus that I deleted, and was wondering if this has something to do with it. Also, it seems to still work perfectly fine and autoplay on my friend's lap top, and my other Asus lap top. Any help would be awesome!

[Carbon]

See if it's got drivers or something automatically installed in Device Manager, try removing them and then reattaching.

Also, check for yellow ? on USB devices.

[Sharpfluffy]

Under device manager, in disk drivers, the WD drive is not showing up. On other computers, when the harddrive is working, it appears in this folder. The light is currently on, and its blue, but the drive seems to have stopped spinning, and does not work.

Any registry files that I might possibly have to delete to reset the drive?

[Carbon]

Unlikely. Sure the USB port/hub is working correctly?

[Sharpfluffy]

All USB ports on my computer are working. Once again, here is what goes down. I plug in the hard drive. It spons up for about 5 seconds, then the computer dings quick like 3 times. After this, the drive stops spinning, but the power light stays on. The drive is no where to be found on my computer. It is not in device manger under disk drives.