External HD woes...

[Lazerbeak]

Not sure if this is the proper forum for this sort of question, but I really need some help.

I have a 250 GB USB external harddrive (a Western Digital MyBook) that's been working fine up until recently. For some reason, every now and then, it acts strangely. The status light blinks constantly (it should stay lit when it's inactive) and it makes a sound as though it's perpetually searching for something. I go into My Computer to see what the problem is, and then the whole system locks up. When I turn off the HD, everything returns to normal.

This has happened once before, but restarting the computer fixed the problem up, after which it worked fine. Now restarting does nothing, and I'm at wits' end. I keep a lot of work on that HD, and it's imperative that I get this thing working again.

I know next to nothing about computers, and searching for a solution on the web yields no help, so I'm wondering if some of the experts here can help me diagnose the problem. Cheers in advance for any help, and if anyone needs more details, ask and I'll try my best to oblige.

[congo]

Inside every external hard disk lies an internal hard disk.

Is it possible for you to pull the drive out and connect it to the conventional internal cables temporarily to get your data off ?

[Lazerbeak]

Is it possible for you to pull the drive out and connect it to the conventional internal cables temporarily to get your data off ?

Unfortunately that's not possible. I wouldn't be able to do that without the help of my father, and he's got enough on his mind as it is...

In any case, I wouldn't know where to put all that data, as I've got the thing nearly filled to capacity.

Also, I have a slight update to my situation. Now every time the damnable thing turns on, everything on my system slows to a crawl. A virus scan reveals nothing (though it says it's scanned 314 items, and there's a LOT more than 314 files on there). When I open Firefox's download manager, the browser freezes, and when I try to access the drive via a desktop shortcut, it says that there was an I/O error (or something to that effect). I've turned it off now (and yet the status light keeps blinking, it's never done that before...), because keeping it on renders my computer a step below inoperable...

I'm really starting to worry now...

[Sytse]

Hmmm... maybe it's just the cable, although that's unlikely to cause the weird behaviour of the HDD. I would check the cable anyway, before overcomplicating things. Do you have a spare cable lying around somewhere?  ;)