hi i have just registered so if i get anything wrong, im sorry.
i bought a Buffalo 1000GB / 1TB DriveStation TurboUSB With Power Saving Mode USB External Hard Drive in November. I then put 500+GB of data on it from my old external hard drive. After about 2-3 weeks it crashed and didn't show up on my laptop, (XP With SP3). It would connect to my computer and then straight away disconnect. It would keep doing this until i removed the USB. Because it kept connecting & disconnecting it didn't show up long enough in the device manager or disk management. I tried it in different computers and with different cables but it had the same effect. I then bought a new laptop, Acer AS5920 C2D 2GB 120GB DVDRW VHP, i plugged in the external hard drive into my new laptop and it installed properly but its not showing up in My Computer. It is in Device Manager and the Disk Management but it says, "Disk 1, Unknown, Not Initialized".
To see image of this click on "Untitled".
When i right click on this and click on initialize disk i get a menu. To see image of this click on untitled2.
I have chosen both of the options and both of them show and error message. To see the error message click on "United3".
I would prefer to get all of my data off the hard drive but if i cant then i am willing to format it and try my luck with the data recovery software
To be honest, it sounds like a hardware error to me and probably a fault with the drive. I had a similar error with an external enclosure where it wouldn't initialise, this was down to a faulty connection that was an error on my part. Obviously, this is a manufactured drive so the error must lay in the manufacturers hands.
If the drive won't connect to the computer, then you won't be able to recover the data. Taking it to a data recovery centre (if the data is important to you) is an option and the drive should hopefully be under warranty from the manufacturer, however they will probably advise you that any data will be lost in the repair.
