Hello,

I have Western Digital 500Gb My Book external hard drive that I purchased about 4 years ago. It has worked fine until now. My PC (XP Pro OS) would always display it as MyBook (D. The other day I turned on my PC and the drive would not be accesable. It now shows up as just Local Drive (E. If I right click to view the properties it displays that it has about 187Gb used space and close to 500Gb total capacity space. So it knows that something is one the drive. But when I click on the drive to open it, I see nothing.

I have tried this on my PC at home and work with the same issue. When I run a Nortan scan on the drive it strangely on scans 4 files and finds no viruses.

Any idea why this is happening? How can I access my data again?

Any help is appreciated.

Are you using Explorer? If so, it can hide drive letters. Look up TWEAKUI and use that to see if drive letters are hidden.

Completely shutdown? That is, shutdown and remove all power from all devices and power bricks for a 10 count and try again?

How about plugging into another USB port? Some discover some ports will not work, but report "OK".

Another option would be to access it through Disk Management

best regards,

Thanks for the reply and the tips.

But I am still unable to see anything in my drive. I tried different USB ports. I used the disk Management tool and it shows my external drive as Online and Healthy. The capacity and spaced used is correct with what is on there, but I am still not able to see anything when I open the drive.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks for posting back.

Did you try the TWEAKUI suggestion?

You could also try this:

• Remove the drive from the case
• Connect it as secondary internatl HD (slave)
• Go to diskmanagement
• Right-click on the HD and select PROPERTIES
• click on TOOLS tab
• Click the CHECK NOW button
• Check both options and start the scan
• If successful, install the HD in the external case.

Before you use any USB drives, make sure that XP has SP2 and Windows Update shows that XP is fully updated.

Always unmount external USB drives using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon down by your clock.

Others may come by to assist, in the meantime here are three links where if your data is most important you can ask for assistance but they cost of course. I have had no experience with any of them however I have seen them recommended on other forums I volunteer on.

File Recovery Repair Software
Ontrack Data Recovery
Drive Savers Data Recovery

How about backup, have you got any? Browse the thread in my signature for suggestions for the future.

Good Luck,

best regards,