External USB hard drive not working, has it died?

Squirminator2k

My girlfriend's external USB hard drive suddenly stopped working.

It's a 1TB "iomega" brand drive. She had been extracting files from a .zip file onto her desktop (not from the external drive) when OS X popped up to notify her that the drive had been improperly ejected, which was odd because a) it was still plugged in, and b) she hadn't done anything with it. She tried unplugging it and plugging it back in, but it wouldn't work.

I just tried the drive on my Windows 7 PC, and it reports that the device "has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it." There doesn't appear to be any way to repair the device from within Win7 it OS X.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Is the drive dead? Is the data lost? Is there any way we can fix this without having to pay some dude a hojillion dollars?

Nibble

There's a possibility that there's an issue with the USB cable or the SATA-to-USB interface inside the enclosure, rather than an issue with the drive itself. Is it still under warranty?

Squirminator2k

The cable isn't the issue - we've tried alternate cables and still get the same problem. She's had it for a couple of years so it's not under warranty.

Nibble

Then try removing the drive and putting it into a new enclosure, or using it as an internal drive, and see if that works.

The_Glad_Hatter

i have to jump trough fiery hoops if i ever accidentally unplug my USB discs.

Spotlight for disc manager (or whatever it's called in english)
plug in the disc and see if it pops up in any form in there.
then try to remove the disc.

That usually doesn't work for me, but i use my thorndike's cat approach and randomly alternate between:
- wait
- eject it trough disc manager
- unplug
- plug it in
- more waiting
- cursing

and one of those generally does the trick...