External hard disk not playing ball.

[Rheghead]

I wonder if anybody can help me with an external hard disk? It is a WD 320GB 'My book' series external hard drive. Previously I've only had to plug it in and it shows an icon on 'my computer' where I can open it up from. No longer possible as there is no icon anymore and any links to the drive seem to crash the computer until I pull the USB plug on it, then puter comes back responsive.

When I plug the drive in, I hear a piano sound which suggests windows vista is picking it up. In device manager, the drive is there listed under disk drives and reports say 'This device is working properly'. I have tried to update the driver and it says driver is the latest one.

The drive is whirring round and seems ok but any attempt to find icon or open a link to its contents results in a crash.

There are lots of family photos on this drive which I'm keen to retrieve.

Thanks hopefully in advance.

[Bobinovich]

Try it on another PC - the drive may well be fine and its just a registry corruption or similar which is causing the problem. If another PC reads it fine then you'll probably need to uninstall the drive, and it may even need a manual clean through of the registry to remove any remaining fragments, before reconnecting the drive.

[Rheghead]

Cheers, I've tried it on my old laptop and the same is happening on that although this time it is coming up in device manager as a 160GB drive istead of 320GB, conflict there. I guess it must be goosed? It is a 'plug and play' drive and it didn't come with any install disk or anything.

[blueivy]

Cheers, I've tried it on my old laptop and the same is happening on that although this time it is coming up in device manager as a 160GB drive istead of 320GB, conflict there. I guess it must be goosed? It is a 'plug and play' drive and it didn't come with any install disk or anything.

The drive could be corrupt rather than goosed. Have you tried to run any disk scanning tools (non destructive type of tools) on it?

[Rheghead]

The drive could be corrupt rather than goosed. Have you tried to run any disk scanning tools (non destructive type of tools) on it?

That could be an idea and I have tried to run the WD diagnostics tool (this picks it up) and it just freezes up. I can't run a disk scanning tool as there is no icon in 'My computer' to start the process. Thanks.

[blueivy]

That could be an idea and I have tried to run the WD diagnostics tool (this picks it up) and it just freezes up. I can't run a disk scanning tool as there is no icon in 'My computer' to start the process. Thanks.

The Windows disk scanning tool is pretty poor anyway (it just does a check for bad sectors) so it's of little use.

I hope somebody can suggest some free tools to let you scan the disk, non destructively, as the tool I use is commercial.

If there are no replies by tomorrow I'll have an ask around.

[plasticjock]

Couple of suggestions come to mind...based on own past experiences.
1: Try a different USB cable.
2: Driver could be corrupted...that was the problem for me. Download a latest version from Western Digital.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp

[Rheghead]

Some good ideas there Plasticjock, I'm most grateful.

I tried another cable from the printer and no difference.

I tried the diagnostics programme, it picked up the drive and it says the drive passed the status tests but when I clicked on the drive in the list to perform other functions then the diagnostics tool just stopped responding. However, an icon did eventually appear there this time in the 'My Computer' window but when I tried to explore the drive it just stopped responding.

[TBH]

Leave the usb lead plugged into your pc then switch the hd off then back on. Or try assigning a drive letter to the hd.
Right click my computer/manage/disk management, then right click on the icon for your external hd/change drive letter and paths. The pc may be assigning a drive letter that is already in use?

[blueivy]

Some good ideas there Plasticjock, I'm most grateful.

I tried another cable from the printer and no difference.

I tried the diagnostics programme, it picked up the drive and it says the drive passed the status tests but when I clicked on the drive in the list to perform other functions then the diagnostics tool just stopped responding. However, an icon did eventually appear there this time in the 'My Computer' window but when I tried to explore the drive it just stopped responding.

In Vista, go to Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management. In the menu tree go to Storage->Disk Management. Can you see your USB drive listed in there? How big does it say it is (the little bit at the left) and how big are the partitions and what are they (the bigger bits to the right)?