Data recovery from failed seagate external HD

homer90

Hey guys,
Looking for options to recover data from my dodgy external hard drive (500gb). Been quoted on average $750 nz + gst for recovery.... :mad:
The drive is not being picked up on various PC's, mac's etc. Can hear the drive running sometimes but its intermittent.
Seagate support is also next to useless ...... the thing that gets me is that its a little over a year old with minimal use. There is a known issue with these drives, but its my problem it seems.

Any Ideas ?

ZENER

Is it a 3.5" with external power supply or a USB powered 2.5" ?

Ken

riclad

is it 2.5 inch, i have a drive 300gb that doesnt work in caddy, works only in a case with external power supply.ie usb power not enough,
You may need to buy another drive, exact same model no,switch round ,drive pcb board.
try live cd,
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
loads off cdr,
burn iso to cd,use IMGburn free program.
or remove power plug,turn off esb power from socket,open pc, install hd in pc, use power ,data cables from dvdrom drive.
if ide ,set to slave mode,jumper, or cs mode,cable select.
ie master mode can cause onflict with drive c;/

riclad

set pc to slow boot ,diagnostic mode,put drive on a cable by itself if its ide type hd.Does it show up in pc bios ,or bootup screen.
Try drive freezer trick,put in freezer,in ziplock bag, for 1 hour,than plug into pc.

homer90

ZENER wrote: »

Is it a 3.5" with external power supply or a USB powered 2.5" ?

Ken

USB Powered

riclad wrote: »

is it 2.5 inch, i have a drive 300gb that doesnt work in caddy, works only in a case with external power supply.ie usb power not enough,
You may need to buy another drive, exact same model no,switch round ,drive pcb board.
try live cd,
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
loads off cdr,
burn iso to cd,use IMGburn free program.
or remove power plug,turn off esb power from socket,open pc, install hd in pc, use power ,data cables from dvdrom drive.
if ide ,set to slave mode,jumper, or cs mode,cable select.
ie master mode can cause onflict with drive c;/

Dammed if im gonna fork out for another seagate.... will keep an eye out on line for parts... will give your other suggestions a go also (Apart from PC as I only have access to laptops) Thanks.

riclad wrote: »

set pc to slow boot ,diagnostic mode,put drive on a cable by itself if its ide type hd.Does it show up in pc bios ,or bootup screen.
Try drive freezer trick,put in freezer,in ziplock bag, for 1 hour,than plug into pc.

Nadda on the freezer option

riclad

IF drive is using just usb, try a powered caddy,external power,
or take power from the pc mobo.
THERES NO DANGER FROM FREEZER TRICK, if bag is sealed ,waterproof.
TRY a different usb cable, i thought my dry was dead, turns out , i just needed a new usb cable.
Go to bios .boot options,advanced ,does drive show up in boot order,eg seagate 570k.
if drive doesnt show up in bios,either cable, or hd pcb,is dead.
I,m assuming your pc is working ok,
try bios slow boot mode.
no point in freezer trick, if drive is not detected in setup,bios mode.

darren2368

I don't have any advice on what you can do but I can tell you your probably better off staying away from seagate external drives in future. I've heard they're meant to be pretty bad.

Better off just spending that little bit extra for a better brand

riclad

THE unit pcb, board,psu ,or cable could be faulty,or just loose,data ,power cable from pcb to hd drive.
REMOVE Drive from case,install in pc,or a powered caddy.

Capt'n Midnight

riclad wrote: »

You may need to buy another drive, exact same model no,switch round ,drive pcb board.
try live cd,
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
...
pc, use power ,data cables from dvdrom drive.
if ide ,set to slave mode,jumper, or cs mode,cable select.

Don't buy the exact same drive unless all and I mean all else fails, and if you do then look for one secondhand so you can get one with not just the same make/model but one with the same firmware - and there is still the chance you could make things harder for when you hand the drive and 800 notes over to the clean room people


put the drive in where the CD is , so it's the only drive on the cable, so no messing with jumpers (gparted can run from USB key)

unless there are serious hardware or software problems with the drive you should be able to copy the files off with gparted

you can lookup smart data with gparted in you look at the properites of the drive, though about half of all drives fail without smart warnings

if the drive is making clicking noises then look up ddrescue, this will copy an image of the disk into one large file, make sure you have logfile setup, if it encounters errors it will skip past them for now, when it gets to the end it'll try to recover the error bits. If the cache on your HDD is dead you can use ddrescue to read backwards


you can then do data recovery on the image file later on

photorec can recover files from a drive or image even after all folder / filename information has been lost


If data recovery is critical then AVOID any recovery utility that WRITES to the drive until you have imaged the drive

YMMV

Remember there are two types of hard drive.

Those that are going to fail and ...

riclad

I have a seagate ,500gig sata, i plug it into my pc, load gparted ,live cd,
it says no device detected,
i presume the pcb is dead.on my hardrive.it s not detected in bios menu.
its easy to download gparted, burn image to cdr ,use Imgburn to make live cd.
by all means make a bootable gparted usb drive, if you can.As in above post.