Very odd External Hard Drive issue...

[Greatguardian]

I'm having a rather odd external hard drive issue at the moment. I'm borrowing my roommate's 1 Terabyte WesternDigital "MyBook" External hard drive. This is the same hard drive I used to backup my files before a reformat a couple months ago, and worked fine then. I was able to get all of my files off of it, and onto my machine. It, literally, has not been so much as plugged in since.

Now, for some reason, when I plug it in it will not show up in Computer at all. I can't navigate to it via Run (as I don't even know what letter the drive is assigned, trying sequential letters directs me to Sys32). When I plug it into my laptop (Windows XP x86. Desktop is Vista x86), I get the exact same problem. I'm assuming something's up with the Hard Drive, but I have no idea how to so much as access it to fix it.

In both of these cases I plug the Drive in while the computers are on. When I try shutting down my desktop, plugging the Drive in, and then booting up my desktop, it will freeze at the BIOS. Just, sit there. If I unplug the drive, startup will continue as if nothing had happened. Plug it back in? Freeze. Unplug? Continue. And so on, until startup is finished.

This particular startup issue only happens on my Desktop (Vista x86), though. I can get my Laptop (XP x86) to boot up with the hard drive plugged in, but it will still not show up in "My Computer" at all.

I really don't care about formatting the drive if I need to, I'm the only one who's used it at all and the only files on it are already moved onto my Desktop. But I really can't buy a new one >.>' and it's kinda not mine, so I'd feel like shit if I broke this.

I can see the device in Device Manager, properly labeled and all that. But when I right-click Properties, and go to the Volumes tab, every single listing has a "-" next to it. This is kinda scaring me >.>'. Did I seriously brick this thing after 1 reformat?

[Cephius]

Sometimes these drives just die. Can you hear the plates inside the hard drive clicking and spinning when it's plugged in?

[Greatguardian]

I can hear the device spin up when I plug it in, but it won't make much noise beyond that.

If I go into Disk Management, and rescan disks a few times, I can get it to show up as an Uninitialized Disk (Which is odd, as I've used it before. Probably means it got wiped -.-). However, when I try to initialize it, Windows returns an "Incorrect Function" error.

What I have tried, is downloading the hard drive diagnostic utility provided by the company. When I attempt to check the External drive, it immediately fails the cable test. Is it possible for the cable to be messed up when the device itself is acknowledged while it's plugged in?

By that, I mean can it really be a cable problem that prevents data transfer or verification when the device itself is detected in device manager and so on?

[Cephius]

Yes, it's possible. Try a different a USB cable.

[Greatguardian]

Okay, I tried with a verified good cable. However, it's still giving me the same crap. It'll show up in Device Manager as a non-initialized device with no partition. I'll go into Disk Management, try to initialize it, and get an "Incorrect Function" error. -.-. This is epicly annoying.

What it might come down to, is me using both my laptop's hard drive and my flash drives as a pseudo-external and just backup 20GB worth of shit then reformat. I just want my Win7.

[Solefald]

USB hard drives are terrible. If absolutely nothing else works, you can remove the drive's housing and format it internally. Hopefully it's SATA and not mini-PATA or whatever.

[rosemarie]

I had the same problem. Ended up being the drive randomly died. You can use Parted Magic to try to retrieve your information. Else RMA if you still have warranty.

[bungiefan]

I had this happen to a drive when I was in the middle of backing up data from it to a new hard drive I had just installed. My WDG2T10000N died and was in RAID1 configuration. I lost a few things I would rather not have, but I did have most of the data copied elsewhere before it locked up Windows Explorer and stopped showing up on any computer. I think the RAID controller is what actually died, but the price of a replacement of that model has gone up from the $140 I paid for mine.