Until recently I was using the portable USB hard drive in my win 7 laptop and ubuntu laptop. Suddenly now none of the laptops recognize it.

This is the message i get by doing lsusb...

    Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1058:1010 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Elements External HDD
    Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
    Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
    Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
    Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0b97:7762 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 SmartCard Reader
    Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0b97:7761 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 1.1 Hub
    Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
    Bus 002 Device 002: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp. Internal 2.0 Hub
    Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

fdisk doesn't show the external hard drive

    Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
    255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
    Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    Disk identifier: 0x0004a743

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
    /dev/sda1   *        2048   152111103    76054528   83  Linux
    /dev/sda2       152113150   156301311     2094081    5  Extended
    /dev/sda5       152113152   156301311     2094080   82  Linux swap / Solaris

when i do testdisk

    TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013
    Christophe GRENIER <[email protected]>
    http://www.cgsecurity.org

    TestDisk is free software, and
    comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

    Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press Enter):
    >Disk /dev/sda - 80 GB / 74 GiB - ST980825AS
    Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB

    testdisk-> Intel->analyse I get partition error

    Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB - CHS 2097152 64 32
    Current partition structure:
    Partition                  Start        End    Size in sectors


    Partition: Read error

Here is the output of dmesg

    [11948.549171] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code
    [11948.549177] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: 
    [11948.549181] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
    [11948.550489] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Invalid command failure
    [11948.550495] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb]  
    [11948.550499] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
    [11948.550505] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb]  
    [11948.550508] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
    [11948.550514] Info fld=0x0
    [11948.550519] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb]  
    [11948.550525] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code
    [11948.550531] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: 
    [11948.550534] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
    [11948.551870] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Invalid command failure
    [11948.551876] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb]  
    [11948.551880] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
    [11948.551885] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb]  
    [11948.551888] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
    [11948.551895] Info fld=0x0
    [11948.551900] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb]  
    [11948.551905] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code
    [11948.551911] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: 
    [11948.551914] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00

If possible i want to retrive at least some data from this hard drive. If thats not possible I would like to format it and use it. Any help will be greatly appreciated Thanks