My Book Office Edition 500GB: Dead or Alive?

Hi. I use this External HD (My Book Office Edition 500GB) to save data from 2 PC’s and a laptop. Last time I was using it in a PC it stopped working, it gave me some errors reading some folders and so I unplugged and disconnected only to find it won’t be seen by the PC (or laptop) again! I tried giving it a rest, plugging and unplugging, restarting the PC and nothing seems to work.

Sometimes it seems to be reading it (when I plug it the wd icon comes alive in the tray as well as the usd device icon) and it even shows as F:\ in the PC but when I try to access it it won’t work. The whole machine freezes up and  I haven’t been able to see it again.

I was wondering if it is dead as an external drive and if I can do anything to use it again,even as an internal HD. How can I open it?

Also, what do you recommend as backup, seeing that these External Hard Drives tend to die?

If you disconnected it, or turned it off, without safely removing it, you could have corrupted the partition.  Since there’s been no replies, maybe you should try contacting WD’s Technical Support about this. You can do so either by phone or email.

To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en