problems with flash drive and external hard drive

recently, my flash drive (1GB Cruzer Titanium) has stopped working. when I plug it in, the light flashes once and my computer would say the drive malfunctioned, but now it doesnt even detect it. is there any way I can save the data on the drive?

I also have a 15GB iPod hard drive in an external case, and when I plug it in, it takes up to 2 minutes to mount it. it still has whatever file system the iPod has, I did not format it. would formatting the drive decrease the time to mount, or is there anything else I can do to speed it up?

 

U sure it's not a driver or mobo going bad??

 

i've tested each on multiple computers, they both do the same thing on every computer

 

If it can't detect it then it's very unlikely you'll be able to get data off, check no pins are bent and does it make Windows XP's "chime" when it's plugged in and out?

 

no, the light just flashes and thats it

and what about the hard drive?

 

Is it a drive that's not got any data? I believe that iPods use a specific apple filesystem.

 

I had the same problem with my flash drives and ext hdd - i found a slightly random fix... unplug pc from mains and plug it back in! Sounds silly, but it worked!

 

the hard drive has about 9GB of data on it
the file system reads as FAT32
could the file system be slowing it down?

 

Get the data off it then reformat it, I think it's because the superblocks are in odd positions and it takes Windows a while to find it