Error reading hard drive

[Raziel_kain]

I need major help and at my whits end..I have a WD My Book Essential 2TB external Hard drive. Recently having trying to plug it in to my Vista laptop it just won't read it.. the Hard drive lights up and clicks and whirls but it will not be read by Laptop. every time i try to access my computer, laptop just freezes and locks up and won't respond until i disconnect HD... If I plug it in to my XP desktop it does pick up HD and it comes up as "Local Disk (G)" but when i try to access it there is nothing on there, looking at properties of drive it says it's a "Raw" drive (Previously a FAT32) and there is no bytes on used or unused... i can't format it and when i do a check disk is does it in a micro second as if there is nothing on the drive to check,, I need help as this has all my photos on it and i can't lose them... worse case is that I'm able to format drive and then do a file recovery on it but at the moment i can't even format it

PLEASE HELP I will be extremely grateful for any advice

[KenB]

Hi and welcome to ExTS

 

the Hard drive lights up and clicks and whirls

If the drive clicks - this doesn't sound too good.

A clicking drive is usually indicative of a dead or dying drive.

 

looking at properties of drive it says it's a "Raw"

This isn't good news either.

A drive that is "Raw" is basically unformatted.

This sometimes happens to drives that have a serious problem.

 

I plug it in to my XP desktop it does pick up HD and it comes up as "Local Disk (G)"

If you can get theXP system to recognise it try downloading the diagnostic software from WD and run a test on G: drive ( the external disk )

click here

 

Read the text further down the page.

 

Download the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

There is a Download button about half way down the page.

 

If tha drive fails any of the tests you can assume that it is dead.