I have a Seagate庐 3.5-inch Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive that is giving me some problems.?

When I turn on the power, I can hear the hard drive spin, but my Windows XP laptop will not detect the drive. I have tried a known good cable and also have tried connecting the drive to another computer...no luck. Besides sending in the hard drive for repair, is there anything I can do? I have so much important data on the drive I need whatever help I can get to get the drive working again. Please help!! I bought this drive brand new through Amazon not too long ago. It is a 300GB Seagate also.

I have a Seagate庐 3.5-inch Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive that is giving me some problems.?cafe racer

I'm not familiar with pre-built external HD's, I have 6 or 7 I put together myself (I like knowing what's inside). I have used a lot of Seagate HD's to build them and have never had a problem.

Have you tried to take it apart to install in a desktop computer? Unless there is some sort of onboard ROM you should be able to connect it to either an IDE cable or an SATA connector and see if it is operational.

If it's an IDE drive (takes a 2" ribbon cable) check to make sure it is set to "slave" if the other drive is set to "master". (Assuming there is another drive on the cable). Otherwise, you set it to CS (cable select), making sure it's in the secondary position or else the computer may try to boot from it. If you have a free IDE channel - doubtful if you have an optical drive installed (CD, DVD, etc.), set the drive as "master" or place in the first position on the cable.