If the drive is NOT making strange sounds, you may be able to remove it from the external case and
connect it directly to your computer, bypassing the controller on the external drive, and utilizing the native computer interface.
That is pretty straightforward and works most of the time. FWIW, this is a common problem with Western Digital external devices.
Controller failure seems to happen to them and the maxtor externals a bit more then average in my experience.
If the data on the drive is unreadable after all that, but the drive does not make any noises like its physically damaged,
there is also the possibility of changing the controller board on the drive itself with an exact match. I have saved several drives in the past
wit those methods.
|