I have been using an Acomdata (HD250UE5-72) 250 GB Hard Drive with a PC. It has worked well with an i3 laptop. I would like to change it to work with a new MacBook (Mac OS X Snow leopard 10.6.2). Is the Acomdata designed to work with Mac? How would I reformat it? Thanks, Kelowna, BC

just one firewire cable will work.
if the unit doesn't power on you can pull the hard drive out and put it in another external hard drive case usb/firewire/sata.
if it doesn't work then the only option to recover the data is to send it to a 3rd party hard drive recovery.

replace your USB Cable

there are three main reasons for a hard drive to freeze
up 1. you have reached the capacity of the drive or 2. the drive heads are worn to the point where the drive can not boot up to the PC , meaning the heads need
to be replaced 3. the interface between the unit and
the PC 2.0 high speed will not work into a 1.0 USB

then you have several minor things that can happen
like the degeneration of the cables that are being used , a quick remedy is to go to my computer
right click on the drive compress the drive to save space then do a clean on that drive and also sometimes the HDD needs to be reformatted .

Hi,

Appreciate the direct "Ask Me".

T your concern:

• initially, pls verify that it is indeed an external storage problem rather than a laptop USB issue by trying other USB devices and determine if they are recognized and working;
• disassemble the enclosure of the Acomdata external hard drive and remove the actual hard drive;
• you would need the use of a 2nd PC, a desktop that could accommodate the HD from the Acomdata (IDE or SATA);
• install the HD from the Acomdata as a Secondary Master or Slave internally to the 2nd PC;
• boot the 2nd PC and determine if the HD from the Acomdata will be recognized as a local drive;
• chances are that the partition of the HD from the Acomdata was messed up. This would explain the blinking blue light;
• download and install a file recovery program. An example is GetDataBack (unfortunately not a freeware but DEMO is available) and do a recovery. It would take some time based on the size of the HD from the Acomdata;
• temporarily save the recovered data in the 2nd PC. You can burn this likewise into a DVD backup should the 2nd PC be capable of that;
• after recovery, re-partition and format the HD from the Acomdata while still attached to the 2nd PC;
• should the re-partition and format be successful, you can transfer back the temporarily saved recovered files;
• a nice, simple, fast and safe partitioning/formatting software is Partition Magic (unfortunately not a freeware but FREE TRIAL is available).
• should the re-partition and format be not successful, you can replace only the HD and/or claim warranty.
  

Hope this be of initial help/idea. Pls post back how things turned up or should you need additional information.

Good luck and kind regards. Thank you for using FixYa.

Hmm, that's odd. Does it work on any other PC? And have you had any problems with any other USB devices?

If its an external drive go to my computer, right click on the drive and click format. In the format box you should be able to choose which file system to use. Note: This will erase ALL data on the drive. This works with any secondary drive. For the primary drive you would have to reinstall windows, formatting in the XP setup process to change the file system type.

If the problem is in the controller inside the case which in 99 percent of the times it is, This will certainly fix your problem. The MTBF(mean time between failure) of harddrives is 100,000 hours of operation. Also, any external case can be used that matches your hard drives specs...size, IDE, SATA ect...

Hope this helps you,
George

you may need to reinstall the drivers..

My probleme is who to get drivers to install it on my PC.
Thank you.

i thought that u need to update the bios