WD external USB hard disk not recognised

can someone please help???

My HD is not being picked up by my laptop…

i have gone into “Disk Management” and is showing up as: Disk1  |  Unknown  |  not initialised

I have checked device manager and it is saying USB external storage device is healthy

When i plug it in to my laptop it makes a clicking noise for a minute or so and then quiet! lights flashing as soon as i connect!

I have some VERY important data on their that i need

any help will be most appreciated!

It sounds like something is corrupt. Try burning a Linux Live CD and booting from that it may allow access to the disk. Or try recovery software like TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk or Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva 

Joe

TestDisk not recognise the external drive! so cant test anything??

how do u burn a linux disk?

im a complete novice…

thanks

Find a Linuk Live app like Knopix http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html  download the ISO and burn it to a disk.

Joe

I had a similar problem and  couldnt see the files using linux ubuntu. Finally I was able to recover the files using Active@ Partition Recovery. On http://www.partition-recovery.com/ they have a freeware version to check whether you can actually see your files. If you can, you can purchase the full software to recover them.

Good luck

Joe,

I ahve downloaded Knopix and burnt it to CD…

rebooted my laptop with the cd in

and then what do i need to do???

Explore and see if you can find the drive and data.

Joe