I have a Simpletech backup drive, about three years old. Up until about a year ago, it functioned normally. The typical operation was (1) I would plug it into one of my computer's usb ports, (2) I'd get a little chime telling me my computer recognized it, (3) Autoplay would immediately kick-in and rapidly display all the files it was scanning, and then (4) I'd see it identified in My Computer as the G drive and open up the files.
About a year ago, it would sporadically not be recognized by my computer when I would plug it into a USB port to backup data. What I mean is sometimes above (3) and (4) would not occur. Again, this would be an occasional thing and switching it on and off a couple of time usually corrected it.
Not knowing if it helped any, I performed a check disk function on it a couple of times over these months.
The problem seemed to slowly increase in frequency over the year, especially if I had it turned off for a day or longer and then turned it on to connect it with my pc.
But now, over these past two days, I've been completely unable to get it to be recognized by my computer. Above (1) and (2) still occur, but (3) doesn't occur. These past two days sometimes the G drive will appear in My Computer and sometimes it won't. But if it does, clicking on it results in the following message: "G:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable."
I have a sinking feeling in my gut. Is the news as bad as I think?
(Edit: I should also note that I'm fairly sure my usb ports are okay. I can plug flash drives into them without any problems at all.)