It had been giving me write back delayed errors for a couple of days, but now my 250GB external La Cie Porsche drive seems to have died on me completely. I unplugged it and connected it to another USB 2.0 port, but the little led on the side doesn't even turn green/yellow anymore, just bright red. When booting XP, the device is not recognized and when I search for new hardware it reports "device cannot start".
I'm screwed, ain't I? Sure enough the disk was not filled to the brim - phew - but still I think there was about 80GB worth of data on it. Not the most important data admittedly, yet I'd like to recover some if not all before the drive is declared dead officially, or is sent in for repair. I think I'll first have to see if it's still under warranty as it is not that old yet.
Luckily I did register my disk when I bought it, so I just requested my password to be mailed to me again. Let's see if that actually changes anything when it comes to warranty.
Update : It doesn't work when directly connected to a USB port on my desktop, but it is accessible when attached to the powered USB hub. Trying to recover and save data now.