I have suddenly lost all the files held in the editing part of the HD Writer (2.5E) They are in my Drive C but I cannot retrieve them or open them with my Windows software and I need them back in the editing library. Help

Clicking sound on an external hard drive is an indication that it's quiting to work. You mentioned that it's just stopped working, you may need to check the Disk Management of your computer to see if you could still reformat it. To do this, please follow the steps below:

FOR WINDOWS XP AND VISTA:

1. Make sure that the HD is properly connected to the computer.
2. Right-click 'My Computer' or 'Computer' folder and then go to "Manage".
3. Locate and click Disk Management.
4. Then, take note of the drive letters that will appear on the screen.
5. While the Disk Management window is opened, unplug the HD and check which drive letter will disappear.
6. If a drive letter disappears, then that is your external 250GB HD. You may reformat it to make it work again.

NOTE: Reformatting the HD will erase all the files saved in it. You may want to bring your HD in any data recovery center to retrieve the important files. If the HD didn't show up under your Disk Management, then there's nothing that we could do but to bring your HD in to the Data Recovery to save the files.

FOR MACINTOSH OSX:

1. Connect your HD to the computer.
2. Click 'Go' (located near the Apple icon, Finder, File, Edit and View).
3. Select Utilities and then click the Disk Utility Icon.
4. Take note the drive letters and then unplug the HD.

If a drive letter disappears, that's your HD. If nothing disappears, then the computer no longer detecting the HD.

Good luck!

Source

you may have a bad drive,but first dose the drive power up not just light up can you hear the drive.
what you have in the box is just a nornal HD in an external box. you can if "absolutely nessesary " remove the HD and put it into your PC as a second drive.
but first you need to know if it is running and if the WD My Book power supple is working.
Have you tried using a different USB cable? a different power supply of the same Voltage & amps.

Unfortunately, there's no way to retrieve any PC files. Once you reformat your external HD, everything would be erased.

Thank you!

Are the video files the same format ?

this can happen sometimes, it could be a wrong code format when recorded or the device cannot read the code that its been put in. i have had this with some car cameras and cctv systems. its very hard to find software to open the files and fix them.

replace mt2s extension with other more accessible

If you really can not get it to work anymore, you could try opening it up and connecting the hdd directly on a IDE/SATA port in your computer. This will only work if you have a desktop, for a laptop you would need all kinds of converters.

Same problem. Had to ditch the HD swaping and just use a network share. I lost 2 500 Western Digitals the same way and they can only say ," so sorry for you". 

Hi,

Try using recuva.

www.recuva.com

I had this same issue...I bet you're using DVD-R, am I correct?

Apparently you can't copy video from DVD-R to the HD Writer. Period. Just can't do it. (Would be nice if they mentioned this in the manual.)

You can only use DVD-RW and must format the disc to VR format, not Video format.

I'm using a program called Handbrake (free) which I think can convert your .vob files (from the Video_TS folder on your DVD) to quicktime files, or similar, so that you can actually do something with the video...

Best of luck, I'm really no expert, and I probably won't return to this page, so a reply to me is likely not going to be read by me...