My external harddrive just stopped working!!!! thank god I don't have my pictures in there! I have 2 set's of 250gb and a 500gb hard disks, and 1 of them just stopped working! When plugged into the electrical socket isn't the hard disk supposed to give a weak noise that indicates that it's turned on? or are they all quiet?

Some hard drives are noisier than others, and some of the better ones are very quite. They can fail for mechanical reasons, but also for electronic reasons. One of the most common electrical reasons that external hard drives fail, is the power supply, So I would start by checking that. Keep in mind though, that hard drives do and will fail, and you should have backups of any important data, and pictures.

There are a lot of electronics of the control board as well as the power supply which are often the 1st things to fail if the drive is not too old. There is usually a 3 yr warranty on them from the manufacturer and when you send them back for service or replacement, the manufacturer has tools necessary to recover you data.
If the unit is dead, you could check the power feed, and whatever protection device is on the power supply (Fuse or circuit breaker). However if you plan to send it back, don't open the unit or you will void the warranty. Good luck.
Regards, Murray

Gerry, Mac or PC?

Hard drives usually give some sign of pending failure before completely flaking out. Early symptoms might be, clicking noises, file copy failure, inability to mount. Had it exhibited any of these symptoms?

Some hard drives are noisier than others, and some of the better ones are very quite. They can fail for mechanical reasons, but also for electronic reasons. One of the most common electrical reasons that external hard drives fail, is the power supply, So I would start by checking that. Keep in mind though, that hard drives do and will fail, and you should have backups of any important data, and pictures.

Thanks, but I have put my ear down to the hard disk to really have a good listen to it...but there is not a sound...the light is glowing green on the power in light on the hard disk box...

There are a lot of electronics of the control board as well as the power supply which are often the 1st things to fail if the drive is not too old. There is usually a 3 yr warranty on them from the manufacturer and when you send them back for service or replacement, the manufacturer has tools necessary to recover you data.
If the unit is dead, you could check the power feed, and whatever protection device is on the power supply (Fuse or circuit breaker). However if you plan to send it back, don't open the unit or you will void the warranty. Good luck.
Regards, Murray

thanks for replying, the hard disk is set together from 2 pieces, the hard disk and the external box...so there is no warranty

Gerry, Mac or PC?

Hard drives usually give some sign of pending failure before completely flaking out. Early symptoms might be, clicking noises, file copy failure, inability to mount. Had it exhibited any of these symptoms?

No, symptoms, I listen to my computer and to every soundthat it makes that is out of ther ordinary...

THANKS FOR REPLYING GUYS! Maybe it's the power cord that goes from power in and to the hard disk...You know, you have seen in in a machine...the yellow, red and black cable with a plastic connection...

Superkoax,

I know you don't want to hear this now, but unfortunately there are only 2 kinds of drives: the ones that have failed and the ones that will fail.

Unless a mechanical piece broke outright (by that I mean literally it snapped in two ...), which is highly unlikely, drives don't "just stop working". The other only possibility would be for the software driver to be deleted or damaged in such a way that the os would not "see" the drive.

This being an external drive, have you tried to connect it to another computer?

Is it connected via USB to the computer? Is the USB port working?

Did the drive "stop working" after a power failure? If it did, does the drive have a reset or on/off switch?

How old is the drive? What technology does it use: IDE, SATA or SCSI?
Generally speaking IDE is the most prone to "dying" and SCSI the least. Needless to say that the prices of each are proportionally to its MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures).

It is possible, it has happened to me more that once, that you didn't notice some of the symptoms of a not very healthy drive:

unusual noises, clicks or hums?
slight delays either writing to it or reading from it?
slight delays by the OS discovering the drive?

Regarding the noise: you may not notice any sound at all if there is no read or write activity. However being an external drive, it must have an LED indicating that it is "on" or "off". Are there any lights of any kind?

Just a few thoughts...

My external harddrive just stopped working!!!! thank god I don't have my pictures in there! I have 2 set's of 250gb and a 500gb hard disks, and 1 of them just stopped working! When plugged into the electrical socket isn't the hard disk supposed to give a weak noise that indicates that it's turned on? or are they all quiet?

I had a similar problem this week, but I was lucky all I needed to do is swap the connections with another external HD including the USB cable then all was working as usual. SO I guess my suggestion is check and swap all cables, maybe it's as simple as mine was.

My daughters external USB hard drive stopped last week. It ended up being the USB chip on her motherboard. She's not real sure what blew the chip. She took the drive to work and plugged it into one of the computers and it worked okay.

Data Rescue saved my butt once - clients drive that I kept.