[USB malfuction on external hard drive]

bigchief

Pleasse do not hijack an existing thread even though the problem may appear to be the same. I have split your post to a new thread.

It is amost impossible to determine if your problem is caused by a fault in the drive enclosure electronics or on the hard drive itself.

Your best - and probably only, bet is to remove the drive from the case and hitch it up as a slave drive in the computer. If the drive is recognised copy the data off.

If the drive is recognised I would check it out with the drive manufacturer's disk diagnostics and if it passes get hold of another external enclosure and fit the drive to it.

ExcelStore ....
http://www.excelstor.com/en/download.asp
Hitachi .....
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
Samsung ....
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/Support_HUTIL.html
Seagate, Maxtor, Quantum .....
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/
Western Digital ....
http://support.wdc.com/download/