BleepingComputer.com: WD external HDD 500GB not working on vista

Hey I'm new to this, so I hope I'm posting in the right section.

I've had this external hard disk drive from Western Digital 500GB for a while now, over a year. It's worked perfectly so far and I've been filling it lovingly with safe data around 400GB so far.
Recently I plugged it into the same computer that I have (running vista), and it wouldn't work. It wouldn't appear on my computer or on disk management. I thought that was the problem and reinstalled some drivers. Later I realized it was initializing, but it was taking a very long time. Around 10-15 mins to appear on my computer and disk management, and it would usually freeze all other processes while it was being initialized, also note that autoplay does not appear anymore. I've never had this problem before with it taking so long, and its been at 400GB for a while before this and working perfectly. i dont know why brand it is exactly, but it has a weird case which has A-byte written on its side, and requires a USB connection as well as a separate power supply. also, it might be important to state the obvious that the normal lights and sounds occur. ive tried it on a friends computer and similar things happen, so im pretty sure its not the laptop.

After some hopeless searching, I tried a couple of things. i tried downloading TweakUI, but to no avail as it does not work on vista for some reason. chkdsk fails, or rather i leave it for hours and come back to find it "completed" but it only checks 36 files out of millions, without any errors to report. i tried downloading WD lifeguard diagnostics.. the drive letter registers as a logical drive H:/ and only registers as a generic USB disc on the physical drive list (i dont know if this means anything).
the quick test passes with flying colors. as for the extended test, i just ran it, it completed and reported bad sectors, tried to repair them, but reported that it cant repair all of them. im doing it a second time now, just to be sure.
im out of ideas and i appreciate ANY help anyone can give me!! i cant format it as theres a lot of important data in it..

oohh i forgot to mention.. i tried opening up its properties and was surprised to find under the owner details: "Unable to display current owner" and when i try to change it i get "access denied".. though no one else uses this HD or computer.. also when i try searching for a file from start>search .. i get "a search location could not be reached"..

i kno this is lengthy, but i have tried to be as comprehensive as possible..

It sounds as if you have a Western Digital hard drive in generic enclosure. I would remove the HDD from the case and install it into a PC and see if you can get important files off of it before it possibly gets worse and stops working all together. The HDD has errors as chk disk has revealed. While the drive is installed in the tower you can also run the manufacture Diagnostic software from Western Digital found here you will need to burn this to a CD and reboot the computer from the CD lastly make sure you select the correct drive when testing (I have chose the wrong drive before LOL ) Run the long and short tests

This post has been edited by Sneakycyber: 18 May 2010 - 07:47 PM