Hi everyone, If any of you guys know what the problem is with this, any help would be appreciated. I bought an external USB 2.0 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300 GB hard drive a while back for backup purposes. Just today, when I turn on my drive, it doesn't want to load up. It makes 3 high pitched sounds, at increasing volume, before coming to a point where you hear some sort of screeching clunking sound... it sounds like the heads are trying to move but they can't. This repeats for about 10 - 15 seconds before stopping... then another 10 - 15 seconds later, it repeats again. I really don't want to RMA this thing because there's alot of data on this drop that I need to keep. Has anyone encountered this problem before? Any help would be appreciated. - Ray.

Doesn't matter if there is alot of data on the drive, if you can't get to it, what good is it?? Look to Maxtor and thier website for diagnostic tools, although this sounds like a hardware failure. Recovering any data when your computer doesn't even recognize the drive can get very, very expensive. Search Engines Are Your Friends ☺ Morpheus: There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. "The Matrix"