Problem with external HD after SP3

[jh88fan]

I use an Apricorn external enclosure and Seagate 7200.10 hard drive for backups. Recently installed Service Pack 3 on my new machine (Windows XP Home). Now cannot access the external HD. It is connected via USB, never had any trouble before SP3. Now it just makes a steady clicking noise (the drive), as if Windows is trying to detect it but doesn't know what to do with it.

Any ideas of what to try? The drive isn't bad, I can still access it from my old machine, with SP2.

I really need to figure this out soon, so thanks for any help.

[shadowpr]

Does the drive just not show up in your computer?

Have you tried to see if it's recognized in disk management?

[jh88fan]

I checked in device manager while the drive was turned on, it was appearing and disappearing there, in time with the clicking noise made by the drive.

[shadowpr]

Try taking the drive out of the housing, and seeing if it will be recongized as an internal drive.

[jh88fan]

Originally Posted by shadowpr Try taking the drive out of the housing, and seeing if it will be recongized as an internal drive.

Update: The drive was recognized internally right away, looks like the data is ok too. Big relief, because my main hard drive is a Seagate 7200.11 500gb with the SD15 firmware, no problems with that yet but at least now I could do a full back-up before I try flashing the drive. The one I took out of the enclosure is a 7200.10 320gb.

So, it seems the Apricorn enclosure went bad (EZ-bus DTS), had it since April 2007, so it's out of warranty. Don't hear of too many problems with those.

[kilgoretrout]

It's the power supply for the Apricorn. I just had the same problem with mine and rma'd the hard drive to Seagate. Got the new drive back from Seagate and had the same clicking sound and no detection. Checked the 12v line on the Apricorn psu and it was reading 10v. The drive works fine when installed internally. The Apricorn unit works fine when I hook up the hard drive power to a separate 12v line so it's the psu for sure.

These Apricorn psus are made by a Taiwanese company named Starmen and we are not the first two people to report problems with these psus. Mine died after two years as well. I contacted Apricorn by email two weeks ago to see if I could get a new psu on any terms and have heard nothing from them.