WD external harddrive 120gb not recognized by XP or Vista?

Question

Hi all!

I got this new Western Digital 120 gb external harddrive last week. Everything was working fine. the drive was working on vista.

last night i went to my friends place and removed the drive directly without selecting the safely remove option. From that point of time the drive doesnt work in vista nor xp. it says usb device malfunctioned. USB device not recongnized!

Please someone help me with this because I had alot of backup in this drive.

Answer 1

sounds like it got corrupted .. there may be several ways to do it but if it was me i would remove it and slave it in directly to the system ide or sata watever the case may be .. then try a recovery app on it ...
http://www.pcperformancetools.com/recovermyfiles.htm

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Answer 2

Plug your not undemanding tension in. Then ideal-click on My computing device and choose 'cope with'. Then opt for 'Disk administration' from the menu on the left. Over on the final facet, you will then see a itemizing of each not undemanding tension on your computing device (your USB not undemanding tension *could* be there). See if it has a tension letter assigned to it (D: E: F: and so on.) merely to the final of its quantity call. i'm guessing that it would not. If not, then ideal-click on the quantity call and choose 'exchange tension Letter and Paths' and supply it a tension letter. Then it would paintings like accepted. If it nonetheless would not paintings, then flow returned to that exact same reveal, yet ideal-click on the exterior not undemanding tension's quantity call and choose 'format'. this could ERASE each thing on the not undemanding tension nevertheless. So in basic terms try this as a final motel.

Answer 3

Um, that's why they have the "remove safely" option. Talk to Western Digital, they may have some magic for you. Otherwise, your files may be lost.