Western digital 500GB

Try downloading the device driver from western digital site for your respective OS. And try formatting it with the western digital inbuilt software, which works great.

Here are some options to try: - Purchase an alternate enclosure for your hard disk enclosure in case the circuit board in the WD case has gone bad. - Try accessing the drive via MS DOS window and use CHKDSK command to repair the drive (if you can get it to be recognized). - Try connecting the drive to an alternate PC or even a Mac to see if the drive can be recognized (perform disk repair if recognized).

Is the drive operating normally except for the lights not working correctly?

The hard drive could be damaged but the USB adapter case electronics is OK. Therefore the computer can see the USB device (adapter case) but not the hard drive. If the hard drive makes a clicking noise or you cannot hear the hard drive spin, then the hard drive is definitely faulty.

There is very little chance you can recover data from a faulty hard drive.
There are companies that can recover data from faulty hard drives but it will cost you an arm and a leg for their services.

Doewnload Testdisk and run it to see if it can find a boot sector.

Yes. This is going to sound strange. Put the drive in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer. Next day, take it out, hook it up, and see if it is recognized.

If so, under My computer, right click on the drive - click Properties - then Tools, then Error Checking. Check box Automatically Fix File System Errors. Let it run. If everything shows up, be ready to transfer wnat you want off of it.

Freezing shrinks the metal parts . Microscopically, but often enough to get stuck parts free enough to get working.

I just went through this with a 750Gig Book. now i have reformatted the drive (after transferring all over to new drive) and the clicking is gone and all disk checks are fine and i wonder whether to trust this device ever again... Hate to just throw out a large drive.

You can do this!

1. Connect your 500gig drive as the slave of your smaller boot drive.
2. Go to http://freewareapp.com/western-digital-data-lifeguard-tools_download/ and get the Western Digital Lifeguard tools.
3. Run the executable to install WD tools.
4. Run that application.

You'll notice there is a Drive to Drive Copy utility. This will clone your new 500gig drive from the smaller drive. When the utility finishes copying the drive, shut down. Remove the smaller drive, and set your 500 gig drive as master/single. Reboot, and you should be running off the new drive.

It is possible that your old drive was an IDE drive and your new one is SATA. If so, you may need to enter Setup on the reboot, go to the Boot menu, and set the boot device to the new drive type.

press delete or F2 when you turn on your pc go into setup and change the boot sequence.

Here try this...unplug everything including the power cable...press and hold the button on the unit for 10 seconds. after that hook the unit back in the power cord first..and it should work...files and everythin are there...I got this from tech support and it worked for me

I was just having the same problem... but someone I connected it to my computer, forgot it was connected, and when i got back everything was back again (needless to say i got another 500GB HD from another company and back up the first 500gb).

But if that didn't work, i was going to take the drive out and connect it as a slave to my computers MB, back it up, reformat it, and then put it back in the enclosure to see if it works again (at least i have my data).

$500 bucks?!?!? Shoot, send it to me and i'll do it for $299 (that includes a Western Digital 500gb External =)

Hopes this helps.