Save this sinking ship
All signs pointing toward my external hardrive say "Titanic." The thing is nearly full of several years of photos and scanned negatives. Of course I don't have them backed up anywhere else. And now my computer is saying that it is an Unknown Device. I've run through all the Windows help menus to deal with a malfunctioning USB device, but nothing. Their advice? "Replace the device." Microsoft, I want to like you- the Gates Foundation does such wonderful things- but you are so unhelpful and full of vulnerabilities. If my genius husband were nearer, he would fix this in no time, I'm sure. But he's not and my computer's hard drive is full, yet I keep taking pictures and need to store them somewhere... So, I'm wondering, does anybody have any advice about this? Has anyone else dealt with this? I did a Google search, and I turned up a bunch of $oftware that I can buy that promise to help, but surely there's a free killer app out there, right? Anyone? Help?
Goodness, this is a popular topic this weekend. I don't know what kind of external hard drive you have... However, I have heard that Maxtors are infamous for suddenly dying and destroying all data stored on them (full disclosure: we have a Maxtor and continually pray this won't happen to us - although we plan to replace it when we return to the states). I hope that this isn't the case for you. Perhaps the geek squad from Best Buy could help?? I hope you get it sorted out soon!
Yuck, I hate when the computer gets weird. You should ask Erin, from SPS, her husband is an honest-to-goodness computer guy.
I know your pain. We had a couple close calls w/ our MAC. The first time we hired a guy to fix it. Then we backed up all our pics on CD. Now we have a new computer since the lap top was about to die.
Good luck.