Problems with my external hard drive

[joe2006]

One of my external hard drives has not been starting easily for the past few months. Everytime I would turn on my computer I had to disconnect the USB cord and reconnect it several times so it would turn on. Eventually it quit working so I found out that I could remove the USB adapter from the hard drive and snap it back on. I opened the USB adapter to see if there was a problem in it. I looked inside and the wires that went from the back of the USB port to the circuit board were broken so I ordered me a new USB adapter exactly like the one I had. I connected the new one up and it still did not work. There is an error code 28 in the device manager. I then thought I had to install a driver for it to work but it looks like it automatically installs it and there was no driver to be found. After messing around with the adapter for several days I tried taking the hard drive out it the casing and putting it in one of my old computers. The computer did not recognize it as a hard drive and I could not access it. Now I am completely stumped. Anyone know anything else that might make this work?

[JimboUK]

Error 28 usually means Windows doesn't have or can't find the driver, that shouldn't happen with a USB drive. Normally when these USB drives play up it's either the cable or something in the caddy but as your's is playing up when connected directly to a PC then it does suggest the drive itself is faulty and there's not a great deal you can do about it. I've just lost a 1TB USB drive, it's a pain in the backside.