Without warning this hdd stopped working. No icon in My computor, red activity light permanently on which only light up when writing data to it. Concluded it's either the hdd or the USB bridge that's died. I replaced the hdd but still no icon, red activity light does NOT light up. I could remove the hdd and connect it as a slave to the primary C internal hdd as it's a standard Maxtor Fireball 3 but I'm concerned that it could damage it before and I'll loose all the personal data that's on it ..... contacted Maxtor but they're useless, any suggestions.

Here is a review that just shows others with similar problems:

Here

When you say you "replaced the hdd" do you mean you tried a different drive?

Are you saying that this USB drive is also IDE compatable?

Replaced the hdd = dismantled the case and removed the existing hdd. This is a standard Maxtor Fireball 3 Ultra DMA 133 5400 rpm 40GB IDE drive installed inside an external case and USB bridge which is then connected to the USB port on my pc by a cable. I installed and connected a different working IDE hdd to the external case and USB bridge and reconnected to my pc by cable. Did this to prove if it was the 40GB hdd or USB bridge had died, still no icon in My Computer suggests it's the USB bridge and therefore the hdd is OK and connecting as a slave to the internal IDE cable is the way to prove it but I'm reluctant as this may damage the hdd permantly if there is some previous damage which may be recoverable by a specialist Data Recovery Company - made some enquiries and average cost is £500 .... ooch!

Are you familiar with PowerMax?
The Maxtor drive diagnostic that you can download, then create a floppy boot disk.
Then with the Fireball installed (I would suggest having it & only it installed)
Boot the system with PowerMax and let it run its tests.

PowerMax

If that link doesn't work try this one and search for ATA diagnostics

Maxtor

Here is a description of PowerMax:

The PowerMax utility is designed to perform diagnostic read/write verifications on Maxtor and Quantum hard drives. These tests will determine hard drive integrity. The PowerMax utility is effective on all ATA (IDE) hard drives with a capacity greater than or equal to 500 MB. Maxtor recommends the use of this utility for troubleshooting potential hard drive problems. These problems include, but are not limited to the following:

Potential hard drive surface problems (e.g., bad clusters, bad sectors, partitioning/formatting problems, etc.).
Drive recognition problems (e.g. hard drive that is not recognized by the operating system).
Software removal.