My external HD broke. I'm not sure what's wrong with it. All I know is that my computer can detect the hardware being plugged in but I can't browse through it. If this helps, the night before I found out it was broken, it was making weird whizzing noises.
how do you know the night before it was broken? it can happen that a HD make whizzing noises. have you tried to unplug it and plug it in to another usb(i think it uses usb) dock? can you provide some more info
ok, start device manager, and it it has a exclamation point next to your Hard drive, that means that the computer can't recognize and thats what the problem is i think. If that is the problem, then right click your hard drive in device manager and remove / delete it. Replug it back in and see if it starts working, if it dosent, then restart computer and then try again. If it still keeps happening, then your hard drive is probably messed up. Device manager > My Computer ( Right click, and select properties) > Hardware tab and it should be the first one called device manager. Hope this helps.
Wizzing noise....did you bump or knock the hard drive recently? It could be damaged, taking it to a computer repair shop can get it salvaged, the data anyways. Also, do the above suggestion.
also might be handy to know what kinda of HD it is (some whizz, some click, they all mean different things)
Well I know it hadn't whizzed any time before. Never clicked either. Just that night before I found out. I tried it on a different computer, used different cables, and also used different USB ports. Impact: I'll try that. I'll let you know if it works or not.