WD 1TB External Hard Drive keeps freezing

My WD External Hard drive started messing up yesterday when it would lag my PC and then altogether just freeze my PC. Every time it's connected, it freezes. And then when I unplug, the PC starts working again. I have so much important files on there. I have tried everything that I've seen on the Internet, but nothing would help.

Can anyone please help me?

Additional information:

I have had it for about 3 years.

It's a WD 1TB My Book 1140.

I am on Windows XP

There's a blinking white light that never stops blinking

I have it running constantly.

Up until recently, I had NO problems with it. When the power would go out, it would still work fine, and the power hasn't gone out in like a month. HELP PLEASE!

Solution 1:

It seems that you're not the first one to experience issues with XP and WD hard drives:

http://ccm.net/forum/affich-53951-wdelements-1tb-external-drive-issues

Try disabling legacy USB support in your BIOS.

Solution 2:

You will have to troubleshoot the problem: The first step would be to try a different USB cable, to rule out the possibility of a bad cable. The next step would be removing the disk from the external enclosure and hooking it up directly into a PC and running a chkdsk /r on it (which sounds simpler than it might actually be).