External HDD problem, isn't recognized by xp

I have a 500 gb WD elements external HDD that is causing me a bit of grief. I plugged it into my gf's laptop (vista if it makes any difference) and tried to open an avi file with media player but that crashed. I forced the program closed and then tried opening it again but it didn't work. I first thought it was vista being a bitch as usual so I plugged it into my own laptop (xp but with broken screen, hence the gf's) and nothing either. I can find the disk in disk management, there are no errors reported and I can safely remove the USB mass storage device which is correctly identified as WD but nothing more. I can't access it however.

I have tried a few programs to look at it but TestDisk can see the hdd, but can't identify disk geometry properly, thinks it has max number of cylinders. Manually changing this to what it should be has no effect on the outcome. I try and add a FAT32 partition to the drive but that doesn't help either. TestDisk cannot find any partition regardless what I do.

The disk spins up but sounds as if it is searching for something.

So, what do I do? Sending it off to the pros for some £300 is a bit excessive, sure I have a bunch of photos I'll miss along with the usual stuff on an external hdd.

 

Hi Inveramsay,

I asumed that your external HDD is a 3.5" normal desktop HDD.

Maybe it's not the HDD that fault, it's the HDD casing..try take out the hdd from the casing and plug it direct to your pc at the SATA (if it's SATA) or IDE (if it's IDE) connection. Boot the PC and let it detect the HDD and continued to load windows. Go to 'my computer' and look for the HDD, try to browser it, if it's not accesible, than the HDD has reach it end of life :-D . If you can browser the HDD, than you got yourself a malfunction external HDD casing.

Or if you can get yourself an USB to SATA/IDE cable, hook the HDD to it and plug it to the PC USB. The same goes if your external HDD is a 2.5" laptop HDD.

Hope this will help resolving your problem & hoping it's not your HDD that is gone dead. I am sorry my english is not very good, i hope this will help you.

chears

 

Gotta jump in here. It sounds like the external HDD you bought is a pre-built external HDD. This is different then buying a case for a HDD and putting the HDD inside. What this means is that if you bought the unit as a pre-constructed external HDD, those things are not meant to be taken apart. You may prevent the HDD from ever working again.

It sounds like the filesystem is corrupted. The only thing I can think to do is to format the entire drive in disk management. You will lose everything on it, but you won't have to pay 300$ for a technician to tell you the same thing. In the future, be sure to back up any important information.

 

Yeah, it is a pre-built one and taking it apart will void warranty.

I think most should be backed up but it is really annoying still. I think about a thousand photos or so will go lost forever.

What do you think of my chances of recovering files after format using one of the usual undelete programs?

 

if you want to use undelete, use it now. Formatting would not make a different, and the undelete program should be able to see the drive regardless of the filesystem damage.