About a week ago it started getting really slow, yesterday it quit being recognized.
Right now I have it hooked up inside the computer (using the cords that went to my cd-rom). It’s NOT in My Computer, it’s in device manager under “other devices” but it’s not showing in Disk Manager so I can’t give it a letter to be seen in My Computer…
Also, it’s in BIOS but it’s recognized as 0 capacity.
I can’t give up on this thing, it has EVERYTHING on it…Including my wedding videos and all the picures/videos I’ve ever own of my daughters…I
I don’t think anything is lost permanently. Especially if the disk wasn’t dropped or formatted or any of that nasty stuff. I bet we have filesystem corruption going on. Or possibly failure of the controller board, which isn’t a big deal as these can be swapped out if need be.
The first thing to be done is not write to the disk in question.
Also, what happens if you connect it to another computer?
And what’s the model # of the disk? There’s like 40 flavors of the Elements series.
If we can’t do anything here through the forum; then there’s always advanced data recovery labs. Sometimes drives need to go there and be worked on with specialized equipment and software! So be prepared for it…
Once you get pictures and videos restored, the next thing you’ll do is go and get a 2nd disk and make a backup! All too often people think external disks *ARE* be-all end-all super-reliable backup devices. When in reality these are just regular disks stuffed into a plastic box and connected via USB.
