Zen
Posts: 763 +49
Well after close to 5 years worth of use, I think my Western Digital external 1TB hard drive went "bye bye"! I'm not really pissing and moaning about this, I have no reason to gripe, the drive has served me very well for again, close to 5 years.
I'd be dishonest if I said that I knew why it checked out. This is just weird, for all day today while my computer has been on, not one problem, not one hick up, not one fart, no nothing......but a fully working external drive. Now within these past several hours, the drive drops off my Windows XP radar and can not be detected.
I've tried all sorts of "quick fixes", but none have worked. Unplugging the firewire cable for a minute and plugging it back in to see if Windows detects the drive, nope. Unplugging the power adapter from it's socket, letting it sit for up to 5 minutes and plugging it back into power, nope. Tried going into the "control panel" and went into "add hardware" as to see if the system at least detected enough to consider it new hardware, nope. Through MS-DOS I manually disengaged the Windows XP firewire bus control, waited for a couple minutes and through DOS reactivated the Windows XP firewire controller, nope. Restarted my computer, went into BIOS and made sure all my setting were normal, making sure they were as last I left them, they were. I hate doing things this way, mainly out of ego, but I tried taking the cheap and quick way out here by going into "system restore" and having Windows XP go a couple days back, as to when the external hard drive was working perfectly, nope. I messed around with the indented or sunken in black power button behind the drive, as to try and either reset it or power cycle it, nope, nothing.
I can tell the drive is trying it's best to come back to life. For when it gets plugged back into power, the drive makes it normal start up sounds, I can hear the rocker arm in there moving about. Other than sound with this drive is vision! The normal white colored bar thing, in front of the drive, the light that goes up and down to express hard drive activity and also let you know the drive is on, that white colored light is not there, the front of the drive is dark, no light. Some of the ideas I did earlier were secured right here on the TechSpot forums, I searched for other who have gone through this, tried some things I saw, but no dice.
It's rare folks, but Zen it dumb founded, I don't know what more I can do here, other than put the drive, en-closer and all in the freezer, for someone around here in another area was saying something about drives and freezers? If anyone here has any idea as to what I can do next, I would sure be thankful for the recommendation, suggestion or advise.
But do note - This drive contains a butt load of video files, namely purchased video files off of iTunes, the complete box set, season 1 to season 7 of Star Trek Voyager. The complete box set of Star Trek Enterprise, the first and only season of the 2008 remake of the Bionic Woman on NBC and the last thing purchased was the entire 2008 to 2009 NBC re-make of Night Rider. You wouldn't by tell say that those are now permanently lost would you? That was a lot of money!
I'd be dishonest if I said that I knew why it checked out. This is just weird, for all day today while my computer has been on, not one problem, not one hick up, not one fart, no nothing......but a fully working external drive. Now within these past several hours, the drive drops off my Windows XP radar and can not be detected.
I've tried all sorts of "quick fixes", but none have worked. Unplugging the firewire cable for a minute and plugging it back in to see if Windows detects the drive, nope. Unplugging the power adapter from it's socket, letting it sit for up to 5 minutes and plugging it back into power, nope. Tried going into the "control panel" and went into "add hardware" as to see if the system at least detected enough to consider it new hardware, nope. Through MS-DOS I manually disengaged the Windows XP firewire bus control, waited for a couple minutes and through DOS reactivated the Windows XP firewire controller, nope. Restarted my computer, went into BIOS and made sure all my setting were normal, making sure they were as last I left them, they were. I hate doing things this way, mainly out of ego, but I tried taking the cheap and quick way out here by going into "system restore" and having Windows XP go a couple days back, as to when the external hard drive was working perfectly, nope. I messed around with the indented or sunken in black power button behind the drive, as to try and either reset it or power cycle it, nope, nothing.
I can tell the drive is trying it's best to come back to life. For when it gets plugged back into power, the drive makes it normal start up sounds, I can hear the rocker arm in there moving about. Other than sound with this drive is vision! The normal white colored bar thing, in front of the drive, the light that goes up and down to express hard drive activity and also let you know the drive is on, that white colored light is not there, the front of the drive is dark, no light. Some of the ideas I did earlier were secured right here on the TechSpot forums, I searched for other who have gone through this, tried some things I saw, but no dice.
It's rare folks, but Zen it dumb founded, I don't know what more I can do here, other than put the drive, en-closer and all in the freezer, for someone around here in another area was saying something about drives and freezers? If anyone here has any idea as to what I can do next, I would sure be thankful for the recommendation, suggestion or advise.
But do note - This drive contains a butt load of video files, namely purchased video files off of iTunes, the complete box set, season 1 to season 7 of Star Trek Voyager. The complete box set of Star Trek Enterprise, the first and only season of the 2008 remake of the Bionic Woman on NBC and the last thing purchased was the entire 2008 to 2009 NBC re-make of Night Rider. You wouldn't by tell say that those are now permanently lost would you? That was a lot of money!
