So I needed to reboot my computer because of some other stuff and after the reboot, I couldn’t access it anymore and it wouldn’t show up in My Computer.
Now, it does show up in Disk Management, but it says that I need to format it first. That wouldn’t be a problem, but most of the files I have in the drive are important and I don’t have other backups of them. Is there any other way I can get the drive to work again, or at least get the files out to my older, now unused, external drive?
I would shut down, unplug the drive and power it down too. Reboot the PC then reconnect the power to the external drive and connect it to a different USB port. I’ve had drives do this from time to time and it’s often the USB getting its knickers in a twist rather than a failure of the disk.
It sounds like something got corrupted. Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva is a free data recovery program. EaseUS and several others have try and buy programs that let you see if it works before buying. Booting from a Linux LiveCD might give you access to the data. TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk might fix the problem.
Joe
