FireWire Drive DOA... what can I do?

[Mojo67821]

I've had this AcomData FW drive since the summer of 2004. Since I'm new to Mac's (1 year) it is formatted in NTFS. A few months ago I tried to plug it in to my windows machine and it began to act funny. Fearing the worst, I copied the most important stuff to my windows machine before I turned it off.

Now, I can not get either computer to even recognize it. I hear it start, spin and fire up but nothing ever shows up on either comp (windows or Mac). There is a lot of stuff I would really like to get off of that drive.

Suggestions? It wasn't the best brand but I figured it would last longer than this. I'm wondering what my options are for data recovery considering my comp won't even recognize the drive. I tried doing a forum search but it didn't yield anything useful. Do I have to bring this into CompUSA, or would that be futile? I'm not even sure where to start.

Not sure if it matters, but I have MBP 15. Also, the drive has a USB interface but that didn't work either.

**Edit: When it was readable, it did mount and read fine in OSX**

 

[OldSkoolNJ]

Well it is most likely out of warranty as most of the companies warranty external drives for a year. So what you could do first to see if it is actualy the drive or if it is the case (controller) is get an empty external case and swap the drive in there. I had a drive "go bad" and decided before giving up on it I would drop it in a empty case and she came right to life. The controller in the first case fried itself. If you are not adventurous or know how to do that then just pay COmpUSA the $30 to swap it from one case to another.

Kevin

 

[Mojo67821]

Well it is most likely out of warranty as most of the companies warranty external drives for a year. So what you could do first to see if it is actualy the drive or if it is the case (controller) is get an empty external case and swap the drive in there. I had a drive "go bad" and decided before giving up on it I would drop it in a empty case and she came right to life. The controller in the first case fried itself. If you are not adventurous or know how to do that then just pay COmpUSA the $30 to swap it from one case to another.

Kevin

That's actually a good idea. Since it spins when I turn it on, my first thought was that maybe the "case" itself wasn't working and so I wasn't able to connect to it.