Well this is a tough one. I am assumeing that you have done all the normal things.
Most external hard drives are just a standard internal hard drive with a case and a IDE/SATA to USB adapter built in. When you plug in the drive and it powers up listen to the drive if you hear a clunk. Not a the happy ticking of a normal drive but a bad clunk. This can mean that the controller on the hard drive itself is bad.
If everything sounds happy then I would try replacing your power adapter. I know that the blue light goes on but most of that runs off the 5 volt leg of the power supply (I have has some hardware manufacturers actually pull the power light voltage from the USB port Grrr) most of the Large sized external hard drives use a 12 volt adapter and it can have no problem with the step down to 5 volt it may have a problem with the 12v.The 12v is what it uses to spin the drive. Unless you have one of those little drives. They use a laptop hard drive that works of a lower voltage. Most of the time you can get an adapter from Radio Shack. Be sure to bring the old one so they can get the Volts, amps, poleartity and the type of connector. It is worth a try and keep the reciept. If it is just bad I am sorry but the only way to get the data off is to break into the unit and pull the hard drive out. Then use another USB to IDE/SATA adapter to pull the data off.
Hope this helps a little.
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