Hello, I have owned a seagate external HD for a couple years now and every now and then (most of the time actually) when I have it plugged into my USB device on my Toshiba Laptop it starts making a beeping noise. I know(FOR A FACT) it is coming from the actual HD. What doesn't make sense is that after doing research, there is nothing in the hardware to actually make a beeping soud. It is a repetitive beep and actually beeps faster when ACCESSING the HD for information. I thought it was quite odd. It works fine though and have rarely had any problems (once or twice in its lifespan I have had to reboot to access HD). Now the real kicker is that I have gone now to a smaller Maxtor 250 GB external HD. I have transferred EVERYTHING to the new DRIVE. Everytime I connect the drive to my laptop it makes a similar beeping noise as the previous seagate HD. Sometimes the new HD when plugged does not pop up but makes a constant on off beep while trying to load on my computer but never does. When I reboot sometimes it works. Finally I plugged it in and unplugged it several times one day and have now lost all my data on the new drive and has become corrupted. Do you guys have any ideas on why this beeping is occuring and why I may have problems with each HD and possibly the reason for my data loo. Also if I could get any pointers on fixing the drive. Do i need to format it? Can I recover any of the data? I have not touched the HD since I lost the data. I was told by someone not to run scndsk. THANK you for your help and SORRY about writing a "novel"!have you tried connecting it to a different computer?