I have a LaCie external HDD (http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10177). I'm borrowing it from my mom who said it's worked every time she's used it but for some reason I can't get windows to recognize it (it's formatted to NTFS). The little icon at the bottom right will appear to "Safely remove USB Mass Storage device" however the disk isn't displayed when I click on Computer. Any reason this might be happening?

EDIT: it's not broken because I can hear it powering up.

Run diskmgmt.msc, do you see it in there?

Run devmgmt.msc, do you see it in there?

Nope

To clarify, You don't see any drives in diskmgmt other than your default drives (whatever those may be)? Did you scroll down and make sure there was not any unallocated or unknown space or just anything not assigned a letter?

If so, then Windows doesn't recognize the external hard drive. USB Mass Storage device is the generic name for USB devices for Windows, it isn't specific to actual storage devices (which I understand could be misleading).

http://i865.photobucket.com/albums/ab216/asapp152/diskmgmt.jpg is all I see.

How would I get it to recognize it? It's kind of important. The PC I'm on is about to die (literally die as in will not work anymore) and I need to get all my important data onto that HDD so I can transfer it to my new PC once I order the parts and build it.

Probably a loose connection in there, which would mean breaking it open, buying an enclosure (because you'll probably break the current one too much) and putting the HDD in there

Better to just get your own HDD (enclosure optional, you'll get better speeds copying over SATA than over USB anyway)

So the HDD is broken? oh wonderful, my mom is going to flip when she hears that.

Well, it could be the cable too. I've had an issue like that with a USB cable before.

Do you have any spare cables you could try, just to be sure?

The HDD isn't necessarily broken, there's just a loose/bad wire somewhere. Like I said, if you break it open and put the hard drive in another enclosure, it'll probably work, but you're best off just getting your own hard drive.

yeah I've tried a few different cables




Well either way I'm getting my ass chewed out. My mom is the kind of person who likes to blame stuff on people and not the thing itself.

Then tell her you're not sure what's wrong with it and have her bring it to a repair shop.

Or did you borrow it to copy data and then found out that it was broken? I was under the impression that she had asked you to fix it for her, if not then you're SOL.

No I borrowed it so I could get some data off my laptop before it falls apart completely (Screen and keyboard are already detached and the on/off switch is about a centimeter from being broken, and it keeps overloading the charger and about electrocuting me.) So yeah, I'm screwed. She paid $200 for it a few years ago, so looks like I owe her some money

Technology doesn't last forever. If it's already a few years old, then it was probably near the end of its life anyways.

I hope she wouldn't make you pay the purchase price if it broke. (which is most likely not your fault)

$200 a few years ago in hard drive terms is less than $30 today

Try telling my mother that

http://ns1758.ca/winch/winchest.html

the good news is that new external drives are both bigger AND cheaper, expect to pay ~ $80 for a > 1TB drive