I have an USB external drive that no longer appears in the list of devices
in My Computer. The drive has worked fine for several years, and then it
just was not there. Is there any way to test the drive to see if is really
dead.

I am running Win XP Pro SP2.

Thanks.

Hello Olen,

When you turn on the Hard Drive, are there any unusual 'clicking' sounds coming from the
disk? If so the disc may of had it.

If you look in Disk Management, Control Panel -> Computer Management -> Disk Management, is
there any reference to your external disk, even an 'unpartitioned' disk in the list?

Are you able to put the disc in another external case, or place another disc in the
mentioned external case to see if it is the case, rather than the disc?

Hope you have a back up of the disc, unless the disc is your back up disc.

In the case you can get the disc to spin download Recuva from http://www.recuva.com/, if
you're in the situation were you may have some corruption (not too physical) on the disc,
and you want to attempt to get as much data off it as possible.

Hope this steers you in a right direction.

- WindPipe



Olen R. Pearson wrote:

Control Panel -> Computer Management -> Disk Management, should be,
Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management.

My sincere apple-logies.....

- WindPipe


WindPipe wrote:

Hi,

Yes, there is a listing for this disk in Disk Management. All the entries
APPEAR normal or correct except there is NO Volume or File System given.
The data on this disk is a backup and can be replaced.

What next????

Thanks.

Olen




"WindPipe" <wind_pipe@msnews.com> wrote in message
news:e9gO6Do2IHA.548@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

Silly question; have you tried a Restart?

Hi!

The first thing to do is to check and see if the drive still turns on and
runs normally when you power it up. (There should be no repetitive loud
clicking or squealing sounds.)

If you can get the drive out of its enclosure and hook it up directly to
your computer's internal hard disk connectors that will give you another
data point as to where the failure lies. I have seen enclosures, bridge
chips (these "convert" SATA/PATA to USB and/or Firewire) and power supplies
all fail.

It's worth a shot and may be all the fix you need if you find the drive
works. Once you are sure of that, you could just buy an empty enclosure and
put the drive in it.

William