I have an 80GB WD Passport External HD that basically died on me about 2 months back, so I saved it and the other day I wanted to see about getting all the info off of it.  I don't REALLY care about the HD itself considering I have since got a 500GB external, but the information on the BROKEN drive is sentimental in a way so I would love to grab the stuff off of it and throw the HDD out if anything.

Now, (keep in mind, it was 2-3 years old) the problem was, one random day I went to plug it back into the same computer as I previously plugged it into, even the same USB port.  It said "new hard disk" or something in the bottom right corner and then says "drivers installed and ready to use" or something similiar and that was it.  It doesn't SHOW in "my computer" or anything.  I have since tried it on about 5-6 different computers with the same result.  I have also tried another USB cord from another external HD.

I took the actual HD out of the casing and it looks LIKE an IDE attachment, but it doesn't fit to an IDE cord.

Any other ideas?  Am I doing something wrong? 

Or is the HD just dead?Sounds as THOUGH the partition information has been wiped from the hard drive. The information on the hard drive may still be intact, but you will likely need to obtain recovery software from the internet to access it. There are plenty of free utilities available for download which will recover the information for you. Just search google for free harddrive recovery software. If you can get the information back, copy it to a working drive as the old drive will probably do the same thing again even if you do get it working.

As for the plugs, it is likely a 2.5" hard drive, as used in laptops.

Good LuckThanks man.  I will do that now and see what I can find.

I will post my findings / results None of the programs will recognize the drive when its plugged in. Its showing me the samething thats in "my computer"

Is there one I should specifically get?It's kind of late for me to do some searching at the moment (4:30 am actually) but I will have a look later and post for you. I have done this a number of times in the past, but it is so infrequent that I don't really have one program I use for it.

Anyway, will reply tomorrow. Quote from: baboontester on July 06, 2010, 11:07:35 AM

It doesn't show in "my computer" or anything.  I have since tried it on about 5-6 different computers with the same result.