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wrote:

> I have a Western Digital 500Gb USB My Book Essential external hard drive
> for backup. I'm running Windows XP Pro. The drive, which had been working
> fine for nearly a year, has suddenly stopped working. At least it's not
> showing up in Windows Explorer and I can't backup anything to it. I have
> tried uninstalling it in Device Manager, I've tried different USB plugs on
> my system. No luck. Tonight I called Western Digital, and after a half
> hour of trying to help me, the service tech said the USB plug on the drive
> was bad. My question about that assessment is while the drive doesn't show
> up in Windows Explorer, it does in Device Manager. When I check Properties
> it says the device is working properly.
......
Do you see it under drive management? Guess no ... or is it there and
appears "unformatted"?
If you are lucky, you may try recovery software to get your data back.

> me. If not, I have to buy a new one. The replacement price is not a
> factor. I just don't understand why I was told the USB connection was bad
> when it shows up everywhere but Windows Explorer. Any ideas? Thanks.

Device manager does not consider anything else but usb device ids and
presence of drivers. Apparently the usb port still supplies a device id, so
it can't be completely dead.
Most of the times, external drives that don't show a driveletter anymore,
have a partition table (fat) failure. With bad luck that can be the result
of improper removal - just while writing to critical sectors - or even a
intermittent contact failure on the usb plug.