External hard drive failed

[mrsurrey]

Hello,

Well we had a backup but unfortunately it's failed! It's an external hard drive seagate 1TB. I can hear it fire up when plugged in, the light comes on, it's listed as a 'device' on the computer but it doesn't appear as a drive and so the files can't be seen. I've tried the Recuva software but I don't think it can work because the device isn't listed as a drive? Please does anyone have any suggestions? (Seagate have kindly offered to try to recover the data for £465! :ooh:)

Thank you for your help

[lomapaseo]

Have you tried moving it to another computer?

[mrsurrey]

Hi lamapaseo - thanks, yes we've tried two other computers - they both show the hard drive listed as a 'device' but not as a drive. (the files were originally saved using one of the three computers)

[Avtrician]

As bazy as this sounds, put the drive in a zip lock bag and put in the freezer overnight. While still cold, Plug it in and try again. have another drive ready to recover the info to.

[le Pingouin]

It could be the interface electronics in the case rather than the drive itself. The cases can be opened up with a bit of perseverance (use Google for you particular model) and if you're lucky it will be a standard SATA drive plugged into a board so you can try it in another case or directly plugged into a computer. If you're unlucky the interface circuitry will be integrated into the drive circuitry and you're screwed.

[WeeJeem]

You don't say what model of drive it is, but I presume that what you have is almost certainly a SATA hard drive with a SATA < - > USB interface attached (eg a Seagate Backup Plus).
Hence, there are a number of possibilities as to what has gone up the Swanee...

1/ The drive is OK, but the partition table has been corrupted somehow.
- - -
To check if this is the case, take a look in Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Storage / Disk Management and see if there is any sign of the attached device and if there is any disk / partition info being displayed (even if it is incorrect). NB Do not try to "fix" the disk here if it does show.
You will then need to use a partition recovery tool (iirc, Recova is only a file recovery utility) to fix the external disks partition tables, maybe something like Minitool Partition Recovery (http://www.minitool.com/free-tools/minitool-partitionrecovery.html) or Partition Find & Mount (http://findandmount.com/). :)


2/ The drive itself is fine, but the SATA/USB interface has failed.
- - -
In this case, you can buy one of these useful little widgets, (https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=delock+61883) crack open the drive box and remove the actual hard drive, then attach the drive to the pc with the aformentionedwidget.
Simples. :)


3/ The interface is fine, but the hard drive itself has failed.
- - -
Then you may well have no option but to write that cheque to Seagate :rolleyes:


Best of luck!!!
WJ

PS Under no circumstances put your disk in a freezer.

[flywatcher]

There are known problems with Seagate 7200.11 hard drives. Have a look at this link and see if there is anything there to help. https://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/Home. Failing this a quick google search for "seagate hard drive problems" will tell you a lot of things that you probably won't want to know.

[Loose rivets]

My Black Armor (American) went TU while I was at the end of a decade in Texas. Bad timing. I had copies of most things but my son said he'd try to capture some of the .jpg files. He used a fan to belt air at the black box and this bought time.

He didn't try to open the box which I think might have been interesting. Yes, open the box and eyeball just what you've got in there. However, freezing and fanning are all about a drive that fails after so many moments due to heat rising - yours sounds like it knows it doesn't want to play right from the get-go. I have a feeling the USB converter thing will show the same, but it is certainly worth a try, and for a very small sum it's a very handy thing to have tucked away. More than once I've used mine to partition and format a new drive before putting it into a new computer.

Have you had a change of OS? i.e. gone over to W10.

When I plug my phone into W10 USB it more often than not does not show on the File Explorer 'Tree'. I don't know why, it always did on W7. Anyway, the thing is, it's there somewhere, and footling around allows me to find the directories and then the dcim / photos folders. Very, very annoying, but they are there.

[sharansingh]

Try to re-install your HDD drivers, may be there drivers may corrupt. Have you tried your hard disk on another computer?

[JimR]

Interesting Loose R. I've noticed the same problem after converting to W10; my iphone 5s also doesn't appear on the devices menu. Sometimes MS, or is it maybe Apple, really p.ss me off! So where did you find the files, I'd be very interested to know before trying to download some other crap to enable me to view them. Tks Jim

[crablab]

Try to re-install your HDD drivers, may be there drivers may corrupt. Have you tried your hard disk on another computer?

There aren't drivers for external harddrives. You'll have USB interface drivers but if these are playing games no USB device is gonna work.

My suggestion is to buy a SATA hard driver adaptor (or even find a nice desktop you can put the HDD into), crack open the case and put the SATA drive (it will be a SATA drive) into the adaptor or desktop.

If it's showing up in partition manager but failing to mount partitions you probably have some bad sectors on the disk. If it's not showing up at all, the onboard electronics are fried. Both cases will require a trip to a specialist...

[Loose rivets]

There aren't drivers for external harddrives.


Erm? . . . My Samsung USB backup drive makes a huge display of opening its control software. Surely there's a driver embedded in that lot? It - whatever it is - shows in Task Manager.

[crablab]

It - whatever it is - shows in Task Manager.
All that "control software" will be bloatware which may or may not provide a useful function. It is not actually required to use the hard drive. The basic drivers will be standard USB mass storage drivers; you shouldn't need anything else.