MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
I have Maxtor Basics portable drive, today I plugged it in and it showed only displayed the first folder, no content.
Restarted computer, now it won't recognise the drive and assign a letter, plus the drive is making quite bleeping noises which is never good!
I store pretty much all our files on there, it acts as the My Documents folder for two PCs, so has all our photos etc on it. I last backed it up a couple of months ago so although not the end of the world, there is a fair bit of stuff that will be lost.
I know of the utilities to recover data but until I can get the PC to recognise the drive I beleive these can't be used...the only tip I can remember is to seal the drive in a ziplock bag and stick it in the freezer...I'm willing to try that but not before checking if there are less violent options! I think its under a year old so I might be able to return it - so have resisted the take it apart option as the screwheads are sealed under its rubber feet.
get the case open and try the drive on a different interface board-sometimes the boards die and the drive is fine. got mine for £20 at (the ubiquitous) pc world
Got the board or the drive for £20?
Get another enclosure (which includes all the interface bits) somewhere like ebuyer and try the drive with that.
Worst case is you've learned a valuable lesson about backing up your data.
New enclosures can be had for around a tenner BTW.