help help

bobreece · 20 Mar 2010 at 14:07

i have a seagate freeagent external hard drive and when i just switched it on it does not light up any more and you can hear the hard drive spin up and make a grindy noise then spin down agian and it just stays in that cycle until i turn it off.
is it died as i have all my family photos and important bits on there

Ziggy4 · 20 Mar 2010 at 14:23

It doesn't sound good I'm afraid but you could try connecting the drive internally to the motherboard. Not familiar with the Freeagent so don't know if removing the drive would invalidate the warranty. I think probably so. I'm guessing this was the only copy of your photos? I'd recommend in future that extrenal drives not be used to store the only copy of valuable data but rather used to backup existing data. You could opt for a professional data recovery service but that can be very expensive, and it all boils down to how much you value the contents of the drive.

I hope however it's some malfunction of the caddie interface or power supply. The symptoms you describe also could be due to insufficient power. My own 2.5" USB powered extrenal behaves in a similar fashion on some laptops which can't provide enough power through the USB ports.

theron · 20 Mar 2010 at 15:10

yeah, grinding noise repeating until shut down = dead

bobreece · 20 Mar 2010 at 15:12

its one thats powered off a mains plug and usb. do you know where i could start to look for recovery specialist?

bobreece · 20 Mar 2010 at 15:12

theron said:
yeah, grinding noise repeating until shut down = dead

but does that mean i will never be able to recover the data?

bobreece · 20 Mar 2010 at 17:06

just been to pc world they said that it sounds like the bit that reads of the disk has come loose jammed or generaly gone wrong and that they could send it away to have the data taken off they said they use the same service the police use to catch criminals but its £699

weird_dave · 20 Mar 2010 at 18:02

There's no guarantee you'll get all the data back since the platter in the HD may have been scratched.

bobreece · 20 Mar 2010 at 18:33

does anyone know where i could take to get looked at and told weather it can be dont or not?

theron · 20 Mar 2010 at 20:14

is it not under warranty?

have you tried looking for any free software around that might allow you to do this yourself?

weird_dave · 20 Mar 2010 at 23:03

software isn't going to do the job since it sounds like there's mechanical issues.

Google says these:

http://www.datarecoveryuk.co.uk/hard-drive.aspx

http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/

bobreece · 21 Mar 2010 at 16:08

theron said:
is it not under warranty?

have you tried looking for any free software around that might allow you to do this yourself?

not look for software didnt think it would do it as it wont connect to pc windows finds no drive

area51 · 25 Mar 2010 at 08:02

hi where abouts in the sunny (well wet)uk? ive a friend thats very good with getting data off trashed HD's. i'l ask him later on about it to see what he reckons? drop me a line if you still neeed to do.

edscdk · 25 Mar 2010 at 08:29

bobreece said:
but does that mean i will never be able to recover the data?

just restore from your last back?

area51 · 29 Mar 2010 at 00:02

Hi had a word with him and he thinks he can.would just need to check it so can see what's what etc then go from there.what he did say you could try is giving it a sharp tap on one side not sure which side heads sit onit.you will have to take out of the caddy/case first plus not plugged in?lol.then give it a sharp tap to one side of case not on top as sometimes the heads stick he was saying.
we call him mr hard drive as he has so many and repaired plenty aswell that have gone wrong.
not sure if you can pm on here? but if you're still stuck? lol.give me a shout.

weird_dave · 29 Mar 2010 at 08:33

The drive heads sweep in from the back of the drive. The danger with giving drives a knock is the heads scraping the platters.