I have used this Seagate Barracuda 250GB external drive for backing up files for over 6mos now.

All of a sudden it stopped working. It had a tendency to heat up. not sure if this was the cause. Anycase, now when I connect the USB, it either never shows up in My Computer as another drive OR if it does, it shows up as local drive but I can't do anything with it. When I try to access it, I get an hour glass and hangs My Computer window forever.

I have bought another larger drive but how do I recover the files and transfer data over when I can't even access the drive?

Any help is much appreciated in advance. Thanks.

This post has been edited by mombasa00: May 4 2008, 12:53 AM

Hi mombasa00, sorry for the delay and welcome to G2G.

I had a similar experience recently with a 250GB External USB drive. Mine also ran very hot. Turned out it was the drive enclosure, not the drive itself.

I mounted the drive as a slave in my computer (not a laptop) and was able to access all the files, so I purchased a new external USB 2.0 drive enclosure, only this one has a fan, so it runs nice and cool. Mounted the drive in the new enclosure and it's been working perfectly ever since.

I only turn it on when I want to use it as it's my backup drive for my web server and laptop.

Thanks. I appreciate the response.

Is there a way I can move the data out to another external drive? I don't want to experiment by putting it in a desktop computer if there is a way to move the data out. I had to buy a larger drive anyway as this one was getting full.

One more question...is there a way to check if there is a virus on the external drive? Could the data have been damaged??

You really only have 3 choices

1. Try the drive in another external USB enclosure,
2. Buy a universal drive adapter like the NewerTech USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter (or equivalent),
3. Mount the drive in another computer as a slave drive. That's all the choices you have.

Until you can access the drive, you can't get the data off it. Once you can access it, you can do anything you want with it's data.

As for a virus. Once you can access the drive, you can run your anti-virus software's scanner against the drive to see if it's infected.

Thanks a lot for pointing out the choices.

I will try one of those as well as scan the disk to ensure I won't be copying a virus over to a new drive!!

Guess this topic can be closed now.

Thanks again for the help.

I also have a 250GB Seatgate drive in an external enclosure and it stopped working. Basically, the same symptoms where it was working for a year and now the computer is sluggish until i turn it off. It will see the drive letter, but when I click on it, there is no response. I can't get to it via DOS either.

I tried putting it into the computer as a Slave and also bought a new enclosure and still nothing. Is there anyway to retrieve my data? The drive is not making any loud clicking, but keeps humming the same pattern like it's stuck. Help>!>!