External Western Digital USB Hard Drive

I have an external Western Digital USB hard drive that recently has seemed to die. When it is plugged into the AC outlet, it sounds like it is running, but when I connect it to any USB port on any computer it won't be detected (show up in the drives list in explorer). After a while the activity light will light and stay on too.



This is self-contained unit bought from a store, not an enclosure for internal hard drives. What can I do to retrieve data off of this USB drive? Any help will be appreciated. Thanks

It sounds like the drive has died. I guess my first attempt would be to take the drive out and connect it inside your computer as a standard internal drive. If that works, then you know it's just the USB controller on the device. If it doesn't work, then the drive has died and there's not much hope of getting your data back...

Does the light stay on any time or just when it's connected to the computer?