Iomega Hard Drive Problem...

Banjaxed82

Basically, I switch it on and there's no sound from the hard drive except for an intermittent BEEP. The light is on and the icon is not showing up on the desktop (Macbook).

The hard drive is a 1Tb -- 2 years old. Earlier on I unplugged it from the usb without ejecting it, that's all I can think of....but sure I've done that before....

Anyway, I'm clueless here. I'm looking on the bright side - I had hardly nothing on the drive of much importance....except for a 300 squid nixer which is gone down the crapper now.

Any help would be welcome. Cheers.

Ronan H

Banjaxed82 wrote: »

Basically, I switch it on and there's no sound from the hard drive except for an intermittent BEEP. The light is on and the icon is not showing up on the desktop (Macbook).

The hard drive is a 1Tb -- 2 years old. Earlier on I unplugged it from the usb without ejecting it, that's all I can think of....but sure I've done that before....

Anyway, I'm clueless here. I'm looking on the bright side - I had hardly nothing on the drive of much importance....except for a 300 squid nixer which is gone down the crapper now.

Any help would be welcome. Cheers.

Try it on a few other machines to see how it goes on them. I was looking at a WD HD for a friend a few weeks ago and it behaved very differently indeed deoending on what machine I had it plugged into. Beeping and popping like mad on one machine, sounding like a "normal" HD on other machine, and just this evening I had a similar experience with an Iomega drive which spun normally on my new Dell and sounded like a disco on my old Dell...

If you have no joy from that then try and YouTube some videos about failing Iomega HDs, sometimes they have soundclips of HDs with explanations of what the sounds mean. I found that very helpful with the WD I referred to above. In the end I was able to diagnose a stuck spindle from comparing the sounds on the HD itself to those on YouTube.

Good luck. If you find a solution please keep us updated!

Ronan

Banjaxed82

Cheers.

Although, it beeps even when USB is unplugged, so that can't be good :eek:

Ronan H

Banjaxed82 wrote: »

Cheers.

Although, it beeps even when USB is unplugged, so that can't be good :eek:

As in, after it's unplugged (or just as you unplug it)? For how long? Does it have it's own power supply? Seems a bit odd that this would happen, unless I have misunderstood what you typed?

Banjaxed82

Probably should have mentioned that....yes, it has it's own power supply. It beeps when turned on, regardless of whether or not it's connected to the computer USB.

Ronan H

Banjaxed82 wrote: »

Probably should have mentioned that....yes, it has it's own power supply. It beeps when turned on, regardless of whether or not it's connected to the computer USB.

I meant to say earlier that sometimes the USB cable that you use can also cause issues, but that is probably not the case here if it happens when powered up.

Is there any sounds apart from the beeping, as in, if you put your ear on the HD can you hear it spinning or clicking, either when just powered on or while connected to the laptop?

I know it's an obvious question but did it fall recently or might it have got a knock or something?

Lots of questions indeed, but the more information there is, the easier it is to diagnose stuff like this...

Delta2113

Sorry to jump in but I have an Iomega 1TB External Hard Drive which I use with My Dell which has windows xp. I transferred some files to my sister's laptop which has Vista and when i used safely remove hardware a message kept popping up telling me some program was still in use and to close it down and try again. I checked and no programs in operation. I tried a few times and eventually just plugged out the usb cable from laptop.

When i reconnected the Iomega to My Dell desktop the drive is not showing at all. It normally showed as Drive I - any suggestions? Have I lost all data?

Ronan H

I think it's unlikely that you have lost all the data based on just plugging it out like you did. I imagine quite a lot of people are not even aware of the "safely Remove..." option and will always just unplug their USB devices when they are finished using them. It appears that USB devices are robust enough to handle premature disconnections like that, although I wouldn't advise it as a regular routine!

As with my responses to the OP, you need to rule out some things, so try the HD on a few different machines and see what happens, try a different cable or two, listen for any sounds that the HD is making, i.e. is it making the same sounds as it used to make when it was working OK? Is it making any sounds at all etc?

ricman

try using it in a pc that has linux on it,if you cant get it working,you can remove the the drive,install it in a caddy unit.
there should be a sticky on this forum.
MY external drive stopped working,what do i do ?This post comes up every week.

ricman

the chances are the data is ok,on the drive,if you put it in a case,or install it in a pc.

yoyo

Head wrote: »

I think it's unlikely that you have lost all the data based on just plugging it out like you did. I imagine quite a lot of people are not even aware of the "safely Remove..." option and will always just unplug their USB devices when they are finished using them. It appears that USB devices are robust enough to handle premature disconnections like that, although I wouldn't advise it as a regular routine!

As with my responses to the OP, you need to rule out some things, so try the HD on a few different machines and see what happens, try a different cable or two, listen for any sounds that the HD is making, i.e. is it making the same sounds as it used to make when it was working OK? Is it making any sounds at all etc?

I would agree, however, its quite easy for disks to get corrupted if people are careless like this, was doing a presentation for a college assignment, plugged my usb (that had the power point file on it) into the mentors laptop, did the presentation and after he just yanked the key out without doing the safely remove hardware process. Fair enough, there wasn't enough time to be messing around but when I plugged the USB key into my home machine (less than a week old key) it would not be read, showed a "scan and fix" scandisk message and thats really it, fixed the key by formatting it, so it is definately a good ides to safely remove your hardware (I lost nothing luckily :P)

Nick

ricman

download mint linux iso,its 699meg, use imgburn free program, burn iso , burn image to cdr.
Reboot pc,mint os will boot up,wait 4mins,plug in the drive, click ok, to prompt open external device.
You may need to set bios,boot mode options, cd=1st device,cd=drive 0.
press del or f2 to acess bios after turning on pc,before windows starts to load.
See www.linuxmint.com http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=67