Data Not Seen on External USB Drive

[i_am_jim]

I urged a computer illiterate friend to get a backup drive a few years ago. He got a Maxtor One Touch III mini external. It worked fine for a couple or three years then stopped. Today I tried to figure out what's wrong. It appears from descriptions of current models these drives get power from the USB connection. The USB cable is connected and a white LED on the drive is lighted. If you unplug the cable the white LED goes out. When an application tries to write to the drive it beeps and continues beeping for a few minutes after the attempt to write has stopped.

The computer recognizes there is supposed to be a drive at the location but when you try to go to it you get an error message that says something like "Insert disk in Drive E:" E is where it thinks the drive is (or should be). The Device Manager cannot identify the drive.

Anyone know what the problem is?

Edited to add:

Windows 7 32bit

 

[phil22]

Possible external hard drive failure. Test it with SeaTools for Windows: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

 

[i_am_jim]

Thanks for your reply.

He doesn't seem to have the Maxtor tools installed on his computer but I don't see how a Windows program can work anyway because Windows cannot read or write to the drive. Maxtor used to have a downloadable utility you put on a CD and booted with it, but apparently they don't do that anymore???