Does windows store a directory listing of the contents of removable drives?

N

NoodleTech

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 14, 2007
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Today I brought my external hard drive to the office and plugged it into the front USB ports on one of the office computers.

The computer froze so I powered down the computer by using the power button. Started it up again and the same thing happened when I plugged the drive in. I tried a USB port on the back of the computer and windows says that USB Device not Recognized. One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned.

The computer looks like a piece of shit that was built by someone who doesn't know how to build computers properly. I am guessing the front USB port somehow damaged the external drive.

I tried it on 4 other office computers.. Same error message.

Brought it home and tried it on my windows 7 machine, same error.

Tried it on my macbook pro and it wasn't even detected.

I hear the drive spinning up and running for about 10 seconds then it spins down.

First of all, is it possible to recover the data and or the drive?

If not, does Windows store a listing of all the files and folders in a removable drive the last time it was online? I just need to know what files and folders are on there for peace of mind.

Thanks!
 
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Well, probably not. You're probably thinking 'why not store a list of the 10-20 files on there somewhere...' but conceivably it could be millions of files on there, where would Windows store that? Only place it would be is in memory, until you powered off the machine, and practically impossible to read from memory anway (unless you're some kind of kernel hacker.)
 
Makes sense... Anything I can try to do to recover the drive? It doesn't have the tell tale clicking sound that I normally associate with failed drives. And how does a USB port damage a hard drive like that?
 
if its a hard drive in a usb enclosure, pull the drive out from the enclosure and hook it up directly to the pc via sata/pata.

Maybe just the usb interface chip got fried.
 
that voids warranty right? I still want the drive replaced. Does WD attempt to pull your data off the drive if you send it in for warranty replacement?
 
i just went ahead and took the drive out and popped it into my blackx... what do you know... works like a charm. thanks ambientZ!
 
no, they won't try and pull your data off. They might just slap the drive into another enclosure and send it to somebody else with all your data intact though as a refurb.

If you can't wipe the drive and throw it back into the enclosure for a return, you can buy drive-less enclosures for fairly cheap.
 
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