I have an old external HD, I'll get the specs if anyone thinks they matter.
I downloaded Bhu's Cat Burglar pdf that is in his sig. I tried to put on on my external because that's where I keep all of my RPG files. I got the following message. "An error has occurred, The destination you have selected does not exist." I ran a disc check. It told me that it found errors and put things in the Found folder (there isn't a found folder, I can view hidden files and it isn't there). Now, not only does the message pop up if I try to put the damn pdf on the external, but I can't open up one of my folders!
Edit: Now I can open the folder. However, I get a new message. I open up a pdf in that folder and get the error message "The drive is not ready for use; its door may be open. Please check drive \Device\Harddisk2\DR2 and make sure that a disk is inserted and that the drive door is closed." Adobe reader opens with a document that seems to be the right amount of pages but every single page is blank.
After some basic testing in multiple folders, all pdf files seem to be having problems. Other file types are kind of having problems apparently.
What can I do? How can I recover my data? Is the external salvageable? I have eighty gigs of crap on this thing, I can't afford to just let all of that go.
Oh, and I can very distinctly hear the discs spinning in the external even when I'm not doing anything with it at all. Going to turn everything off for the night and hope to god that it's some sort of overheating problem.