I cannot open my removable storage on my computer

[rbergmann]

For some reason my PC will not let me open my removable storage device (hard drive). I can find it under Printers and Devices, but when I try and open it it only gives me the properties and it doesn't show up on my control panel as an available device. It used to work perfectly fine and it is used as my backup drive for my PC. What is going on?

 

[tionyrpwy]

Maybe it is virus attacked or FAT is damaged, don't know if there are important files in the drive, in case you need to recover some key data, here is a free data recovery software which may help you: http://download.cnet.com/iCare-Data-Recovery-Free/3000-2248_4-75628752.html
I also read a similar situation in the forum, you may have a glance to see if help:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/288468-32-hardisk-detected-bios-windows

 

[rbergmann]

Thank you so much for your reply. I've actually only been using it to backup my laptop so if I could just get it to work again everything would be back on the drive again. So it isn't so much what is on the drive now, but more my inability to use it. So do you have any suggestions as to how I can try and analyze what is wrong with it?

 

[fzabkar]

You need to determine whether the fault is a logical one (file system), or physical (bad HDD or enclosure).

How do utilities such as HD Sentinel and HDDScan detect your external drive?

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows / Linux):
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:
http://hddscan.com/

How does Microsoft's UVCView utility see the external drive?
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe

UVCView interrogates the USB-SATA bridge board inside the enclosure, while the others try to identify the HDD behind the bridge.