HP SimpleSave freezes computer

I have an HP SimpleSave drive (md1500h) that freezes Windows explorer anytime it is plugged in. It worked fine for a few days and I transferred all my files to it, but now I can't get them back. The drive now emits a steady clicking sound (didn't before), my laptop does reads it but I can't open the subfolders before explorer freezes and has to be restarted. Explorer never fully recovers unless I unplug the drive. Once it's unplugged everything instantly returns to normal. I've tried it on two different computers (Asus laptop w/ Win7 & Intel PC w/ XP) with the same result. I just reset my laptop to factory and everything I had is on this drive :smileysad:

Is there anyway I can recover some of it?

 

Download and burn an Ubuntu Live CD and then boot from it with the HP drive connected. Make sure you choose the proper "flavour" (32-bit or 64-bit). Once you're in the Live CD Desktop, choose the File Manager from the menu in the lower left, locate the drive and files and move those files to where you want them.

The clicking you're hearing may be the "click of death". You may have to destroy the HP drive. I, personally, would have chosen, Western Digital, Seagate or Toshiba for backup drives. I use all three brands and haven't had issues with them.

 

Unfortunately my laptop won't format a disk, just hangs on "Preparing to Format". The drive hasn't been able to read DVD's for over year, only CD's. I suspected in wouldn't write to anything. I'm trying on my computer at work but it doesn't seem to recognize a disc is even inserted.

I tried to recover individual files from the drive using cmd. The clicking sound actually stopped while the drive was being read. Seemed like it was working but it just never finishes and eventually explorer freezes and internet connection is lost. Starting up with the drive already inserted prevents Windows from fully booting. Not sure why it started doing this.

The 500G of movies and music are replaceable eventually, some of the docs...not so much


I'll try safe mode w/cmd and the main admin account. Long shots but what the hell. Hopefully I can get the CD created at work today.

 

IT at your workplace may have disabled writing to optical drives or USB connected peripherals.

Can you use a flash drive on your laptop computer at home? If you can, get a 2GB fast flash drive (class 6 or higher). Use ISO2Disc to "burn" the Ubuntu ISO you downloaded to the flash drive. Set your BIOS's boot order to boot from USB storage first, ahead of the internal hard drive and boot into Ubuntu from the flash drive. Then plug in the SimpleSave drive. You may need to refresh the screen for the HP drive to be detected. Try to get your docs from the HP drive from there.