My computer will not open the folders on my external hard drive.

[KatL]

I plugged my hard drive in for the first time in a few months, and I get the spinning pinwheel of death when I try to open any subfolders on my external hard drive.

Please help!! I have some photos on here that I would be very sad to lose. I already realize I should have backed up to dvds and another drive, but I really thought I was being safe saving them to this external drive at the time.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[inzone]

When you plug the drive in is it recognized in computer and have a drive letter? If you go into disk management what does it say about the drive? Have you tried different usb ports? If all else fails then you can try this free software to recover your files.

http://download.cnet.com/Recuva/3000-2242_4-10753287.html

 

[KatL]

Now my computer won't even recognize that the hard drive is plugged in, despite the fact that the drive is on (and powered by the computer).

 

[inzone]

One thing you can try is to take the drive out of the enclosure and connect it inside your computer just like a regular hdd and that way you can tell if the enclosure is bad or the hdd.