Seagate 320GB External Hard Drive: Dead or Salvageable?

[Impextoo]

My Seagate 320GB External Hard Drive makes a funny whirling noise whenever I plug it into the USB port. The whirling noise is interrupted by an occasion "beep." My computer doesn't recognize that anything has been plugged in. When I went to "Computer Management" and checked under "Disk Management," I'm being shown two additional drives (beyond the C: and D: drives) that are not labeled.

The first one has the following details: FAT file system and Healthy (EISA Configuration) status. When I right-click that drive, it only gives me the option of "Help." I'm pretty sure that's not the Seagate drive but I have no idea what it is.

The second one has the following details: FAT32 file system and Healthy (Unknown Partition) status. When I right-click that drive, all the options expect for "Delete Partition..." and "Help" are unavailable. This is more than likely the Seagate drive.

Is there anything I can go to recover my files off the external drive? Programs, services, anything at all!

 

[Gavin_Capacitor]

It sounds like what is happening is that the HDD is spinning up then giving an error (stopping an beeping). I've had it happen before. The best advice I can give you is to try it until It spins up and then get your data off asap. Also, did you make the drive yourself (buy internal HDD/external case) or is it 'store bought' ?

 

[Impextoo]

I've sat for several hours trying to get the drive to spin correctly. And no, I did not make the drive; I bought it retail.