try plug external hard drive in and i get that usb connected noise but it doesnt show up, weston digital 1tb external hard drive doesnt use own power sourece

any ideas guys?

try a different cable ?

Plug it in, Right click Computer (or My Computer) and click MANAGE.

Click DISK MANAGEMENT and see if its showing up.

1) Control panel===>administrative tools===>computer management===>Disk management

2) You'll see a list of Disks (and partititions) and DVD's (if you have any) and you'll probably see something like Disk 1 with no partition letter assigned

3) Right mouse click and choose Change drive letter and paths ===> add chose a letter from the drop down and the drive will be available.

Sometimes this happens when you switch USB drives between different computers and OS'es -- I think this is due to the "Disk ID" created by Windows .

It could be simply that the power supply in the drive has failed. Put your ear to the hard disk case - no noise is a good clue that the disk is not turning and very often that means failed power supply.

If there is important data on the disk that you NEED, then worth trying is to acquire a hard disk "caddy" ie box with power supply. Take the actual drive unit out of the present external drive and simply plug it into the caddy.

I did this when my external drive failed and it was a life saver because the data on the failed drive was very important.

You can get a caddy on Ebay for less than £10. The same caddy can be used to house a hard disk taken out of an old computer.

Snod

This recently happened to me, a bought a Core 250 Gig Drive last year and archived loads of music & photo's. When I recently accessed to get some pics it showed up in My Computer but when I tried to open it, it said this drive needs formatting !!!!.
I had being recommended this software Recuva a while ago which I used to recover the contains of my Desktop PC's hard drive which crashed on me and would not boot up
So it's come to my resuce twice simply the best file recovery software I've used.
If you decide to use this and want further instructions give me a shout as sometimes the faulty drive doesn't show so you can't see the contents to recover it, this happened to both of my drives, I figured out another way to get to see the drive contents, once you can see the contents you you just right click and choose recover and a browse box appears simply choose a location to recover.
If it's not in a caddy, you might need to buy one to make life easy or you can simply buy the power suppy and connenting leads if it's one off,I bought both a while ago and they have come in handy several times

Leads

Caddy Kit

I've mocked up a screen shot to show it in action.

RECUVA SCREEN SGOT by Micckle, on Flickr

This happened to my external hard drive too. Also made by Western Digital, it's called "My Book" but was rechristened "My Brick" 'cos it's about as responsive as one!

I'd be very interested to know how you managed to see the drive contents when the drive doesn't show up ChrisJ, because this is the problem I've had with mine.

If its Not showing up on Your computer, a simple test is to try
it in another computer. As mentioned the computer could have allocated the drive letter to another device.

if you plug a external drive in, you can hear it spinning up or if you rock it in your hand it can feel like its twice its weight than when not plugged in. If you feel that the good news is there is power to the unit. (not all external drives have a led light).

Normally if its terminal, windows will report back saying so.

hope that helps.

Also removed any usb extension leads.

Leave it unplugged and get a guide from Google on dismantling it. Could be that the PCB has fried and you just need to hook it up to your pc via a sata to usb cable. Depends on the make though, most external drives of that size are just 2.5" laptop drives in a protective shell. Once you open the shell you will see its a normal drive with a pcb plugged into it, some drives are interchangeable, some arent. If its a bit of a scary job, a PC shop will be able to test it for you (Not PC World though!)

yeah power is going into it, it says sometimes do you want to format, also i opened it to put in caddy but wont fit, it has a circuit board attached to the hard drive

Suggest you take / post a photo of the drive and this attached circuit board. That will help folk giving advice. Normally a drive just plugs into the caddy

Snod