External HDD failure i think ?

kai · 23 Jan 2009 at 21:46

i have a Maxtor 160GB Portable Hard Drive failure, tonight on plugging it in, the light comes on however it is not picking up on the several pc's i have tried it on and is making a clicking noise for a few mins before it finally settles./

it's not in disk managment

any ideas?

jak731 · 23 Jan 2009 at 21:47

probs wont make much of a difference, but can u take it out of the case and test it?

this will eliminate a problem with the caddy/case

kai · 23 Jan 2009 at 21:53

i was thinking about that, i have read about doing chkdsk on it but i dont know what the drive letter would be

ChrisLX200 · 24 Jan 2009 at 00:05

Clicking is a bad sign, but try to take it out the case as I don't think you'll get much further without. Plug it in (IDE or SATA port depending on the drive), and see if it shows in BIOS. If it does, see if it shows in Disk Manager. If yes, and the status is OK (no errors shown about the partition) you can access the drive from Windows Explorer and run chkdsk. Going back a step, if it shows in BIOS but not Disk Manager you may still be able to run the manufacturers Disk Utilities program on it for test purposes. See how far you get.