Author Topic: My hard drive is no longer showing up on my computer  (Read 2694 times)

19MandaPanda92

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 2
My hard drive is no longer showing up on my computer
« on: April 30, 2012, 11:22:14 AM »

I have the Buffalo Tech MiniStation Stealth 500GB USB 2.0 model HD-PCT500U2/B. I have owned it less than a month. I bought it from Amazon.com brand new. I have been using it (with NO problems) since I received it, around April 6th or so. I am a photographer and I was running out of space on my computer's hard drive storing all of my RAW files and such. I bought this hard drive for my business specifically. Now I have moved ALL of my client's photos to this hard drive, and suddenly it's not working. It is VERY important that I recover these files. This is what happened:

 

On a job in Arkansas on Saturday night, I was sitting in my hotel room getting ready to look at the pictures from the wedding I'd just photographed and move them to my external hard drive when the hard drive started to freeze up. Every time I would try to access the hard drive through my Bridge program it would freeze for a while, then finally open the file I wanted. Waiting ten minutes for each file to open was getting annoying so I closed the program and safely ejected the hard drive, deciding that I would work on it later. Last night, I got home from Arkansas and decided to try again. I turned on my computer and inserted the USB but Windows Explorer is not registering its existence. The only location the computer at all recognizes the device is with the little "Safely Remove Hardware" button - if I click it and the list of devices to eject shows up, it will be located in this list but I can find it NOWHERE else on the computer. I HAVE to recover these files. I have been paid money for the photos on this drive and if I can't access them I will have to return that money. Last night I got frustrated and gave up.

 

Today, I brought the hard drive with me to work as I usually do, thinking surely there's something wrong with my computer and that I would be able to access the hard drive from my work computer, as I usually can. Wrong. It is doing the EXACT same thing my home computer is. It is clearly recognizing that the device is plugged in, but it WON'T let me access it. I tried uninstalling all of the software associated with the device and restarting the computer, hoping that I could maybe reinstall the software and everything would work just fine. This did not work. Instead of being able to reinstall the software, now the device is STILL inaccessible, and there's no software for it on my computer.

 

The only other information I can think to provide is that around the same time this started happening to my hard drive, my portable internet device ALSO stopped working... meaning my computer isn't recognizing it either. Maybe this will provide some clue as to what is going on.

 

I don't know what to do. PLEASE HELP.


davo

  • Really Big Bull
  • VIP
  • *
  • Posts: 6149
Re: My hard drive is no longer showing up on my computer
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2012, 11:28:37 AM »

Does the HDD appear in Disk Management? Post a screen shot of that section once its connected.

PM me for TFTP / Boot Images / Recovery files  LSRecovery.exe file.
Having network issues? Drop me an email: info@interwebnetworks.com and we will get it fixed!

19MandaPanda92

  • Calf
  • *
  • Posts: 2
Re: My hard drive is no longer showing up on my computer
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2012, 11:41:21 AM »

It does not appear so. It is, however, appearing in the Device Manager.