External harddrive just stopped being accessible.

Hi

I have an external harddrive on a USB2 port that I have been using for ages without problems. Yesterday it just stopped being accessible for no apparent reason. The machine "sees" it (as the F drive) but can't access it. If I try to double click on the F drive the machine takes aaaaaages (green "busy bar" slowly tracking) and then I eventually get an error that says "F:\ is not accessible" - as per this image:



So I assumed the drive had died. But to test that, I plugged it into my g/f's old XP machine and it accessed the drive with no problems whatsoever!

The only other thing I could think to try was to look in disc management. But even though the is an F drive showing in explorer (as per the above image)... it doesn't even show up in disc management!



So, in exasperation, I did a "refresh" of my system. A bit of a drastic step, but I thought maybe it was time for a cleanup anyway. But, after the refresh was done... STILL the same problem! Exactly as per the above images, the machine "sees" the F drive but nothing is accessible.

So I am at my wits end. I really hope someone can help me because I really need access to that drive!

Thanks a million,
The bootifool

CRC error, means the drive is dying. Could also be that the board inside the enclosure went bad. These things only have a finite life.

Hi broe

I guess I should have read up on that error before posting! What threw me was that it loaded up just fine on another machine.

So I ran chkdsk from CMD to see what it could tell me and it says the type of filesystem on that disc is RAW!
That makes NO sense. Would a dead enclosure board cause a false reading like that?

I hope like anything it is the board and not the drive itself. I'll try to put the drive in another enclosure to test that - unless anyone has other advice?

Yes. You could pull the drive from the existing enclosure and try it in a different case, to rule out a bad case or cable.

Cool, thanks, I'll try that. I no longer have another enclosure to test with and it'll be a few days before I can get to the store but I'll try that and report back. Thanks for the advice...