I have Windows XP Home edition SP2. Dell Dimention 4700 2Gigs RAM, 250 Gig Harddrive.

A few months ago, I added an external Maxtor 300 Gig HD. It's worked fine up til about 4 or 5 days ago and things started acting up. My mouse was hard to move to where I wanted it to go sometimes, programs would not open. I bought a new anti-virus program and ran that, fixed those problems, but when I reboot and turn my external hard drive on it takes forever to be seen in My Computer. And the last few times I tried, it shows no files except for one with a dollar sign in front of and in back of it. (now it shows no files at all) But in the bottom left it shows my free space as 246Gig out of 279. So I know my files are still on this drive, but how do I get them back?

Also, the orange tube on the left side of the external drive started clicking a few days ago as it fires up.

Think I need new drivers or need a new hard drive? And how can I get my files off of this one?

oh, and I can't restore to an earlier time either. I tried 10 different dates, to no avail.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
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It's very hard to say, the combination of windows xp and dell does not inspire great confidence to be honest.

I would recommend switching to nod32 antivirus, you can get it from this nod32 reseller, he's good. nod32 is the best I have ever seen, it's a fantastic product, a must have for those who insist on running windows. Or who have to do so by necessity.

It's too hard to say beyond that though, if you are using windows restore you are just restoring the viruses each time, that has to be turned off first before doing the multiple antivirus scans, use this thread to get more resources.

If it's a firewire drive windows has some problems with some of them sometimes.

One good test is always to just install the hard drive inside your box, but dells tend to not give you any extra wiring that will support that.

Anyway, backups would have helped in this situation, real backups, not that windows restore nonsense, which is of very questionable worth.
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