WD External 80g harddrive

I've had this harddrive for aboot a year now, and it's been working very nicely, but recently it just stopped working, it won't autoplay or anything, but when I look for it in the hardware area it recognizes it. What might the problem be/is it fixable without losing all my files, or am I out of luck? I have also taken it out of the casing and just slaving it in my computer, and no dice...

 

What exactly is the "hardware area"? If the drive is recognized in one way or another, you should be able to use a data recovery program to save your info. Luckily, it's only 80gb and chances are it isn't full (imagine if it was a full 500gb drive!). Anyway, be sure you have a place to save the recovered data; either lots of space on drive C: or a different external drive, or whatever. Here's a list of free data recovery programs:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/TestDisk_&_PhotoRec_d5561.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Ultimate_Data_Recovery_d5336.html
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Victoria_for_Windows_d5688.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/TestDisk_d4803.html *
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Partition_Saving_d5753.html *
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Partition_Find_&_Mount_d5740.html *
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Disk_Investigator_d1341.html
.... and one over at Snapfiles http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/softperfect-file-recovery/spfilerecovery.html

* = these are primarily for 'rebuilding' or recovering an entire partition, at the partition level, versus file recovery at the file level.

I haven't necessarily used all of these, I just listed some here for your convenience. I have used PC Inspector; it isn't super user friendly, it isn't super fast, but it does work really well for a free program.

Good luck!

 

In the first instance, 1. is the bios recognising this HDD? 2. is the o/s recognising the drive in Computer Management?