I have a reasonably old external 40GB 2.5" USB drive, the kind that plugs into two USB ports for power. It doesn't seem to have a model number or brand name on it.
I lent it to a friend of mine, and it was working fine this morning. When I got it back this afternoon I tried to plug it in and access it, but it simply won't show up.
I have tried it on three different computers with three different OSs (Ubuntu Linux, Windows XP, Windows 7). In XP it came up with a message saying something like, "this drive could not be recognised". Both Ubuntu and 7 didn't show any sign of recognising it.
The drive was formatted with a single FAT32 partition.
Are there any tests I can do or things I can try to work out if it is completely dead? I'm assuming my friend dropped it or knocked it against something, but he didn't think he had. What could cause this kind of issue?
Thanks,
Arachan.
