External HDD problem.

eneville said:
If the disk's recognised by the OS then it should appear under, right click 'My Computer', 'Mange'. Then, click 'Computer', 'Storage', 'Disk management'. Your Seagate drive should be listed there.

Yes it's listed, initally it had a red (no entry?) sign over it, but I did something which made it accessible like this:

DM3.jpg


eneville said:
The clicking tells me that the likely reason the disk is listed in the devices is because the electronics of the disk still function perfectly well, however something mechanical is preventing the disk to be read. One course of action may be to exchange the platters with another drive casing that matches the Seagate part number. I hope that I am wrong, sometimes I've come across disks that occasionally click, but if it's doing it all the time and this is something you've not experienced from the disk before then it could be fatal, but I'd try everything before giving up on it!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

The clicking varies, sometimes it's regular for a few minutes, other times it goes fairly quiet. The noises are different to how it used to be though. I've no idea what a "platter" is - is this something I can do myself? Any articles you can direct me to?

Thank you very much for your help ;)
 
quattrojames said:
Yes it's listed, initally it had a red (no entry?) sign over it, but I did something which made it accessible like this:

DM3.jpg


The clicking varies, sometimes it's regular for a few minutes, other times it goes fairly quiet. The noises are different to how it used to be though. I've no idea what a "platter" is - is this something I can do myself? Any articles you can direct me to?

Thank you very much for your help ;)
Click to expand...

Right, that doesn't look good from a point of view of being able to read the files from the disk. It looks to me as though the OS is unable to read the disk data. It knows the disks size, but not any partition information.

The platters are the magnetic spinny things inside the housing. Similar to the flappy plastic things in the old 1.44 floppy disks.

Here's an ehow for replacing the platters: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7501260_replacing-hard-drive-platters.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7501260_repla ... tters.html</a><!-- m -->

The hardest thing will be finding an identical disk though, which is what I'd try to do before attempting this.

Although that said, did you do anything that might have trashed the contents of the disk, such as using a low level format, or a partitioning tool?
 
eneville said:
Right, that doesn't look good from a point of view of being able to read the files from the disk. It looks to me as though the OS is unable to read the disk data. It knows the disks size, but not any partition information.

The platters are the magnetic spinny things inside the housing. Similar to the flappy plastic things in the old 1.44 floppy disks.

Here's an ehow for replacing the platters: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7501260_replacing-hard-drive-platters.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7501260_repla ... tters.html</a><!-- m -->

The hardest thing will be finding an identical disk though, which is what I'd try to do before attempting this.

Although that said, did you do anything that might have trashed the contents of the disk, such as using a low level format, or a partitioning tool?
Click to expand...

Great thanks for the guide, I'll try and get my head around that!

What you've said makes perfect sense and seems to be the case, I'm prepared to try new platters, but I'm mindful of the fact that I DON'T want to anything that's going to risk any future chances of a specialist accessing the data if it comes to that.

I've not formatted or partitioned anything on the disc since it failed.
 
quattrojames said:
Great thanks for the guide, I'll try and get my head around that!

What you've said makes perfect sense and seems to be the case, I'm prepared to try new platters, but I'm mindful of the fact that I DON'T want to anything that's going to risk any future chances of a specialist accessing the data if it comes to that.

I've not formatted or partitioned anything on the disc since it failed.
Click to expand...

I think all a data restoration specialist would/can do is swap the platters to a new disk housing... I could be wrong, although I've heard of forensics people going a bit further reading magnetic data from the disk, but that's talking mega money and that's possibly just for the sake of research papers.
 
Have you tried recovery software, since the OS recognises the HD, the recovery software should see it.
See what you can do with that before taking it apart. Might just be partion tables/MBR that died.

I recovered quite a bit of data that way.

Max
 
Max, I've not tried that no, can you recommend some software to start with?

Mine is a Seagate ST 3500830 AS

There are lots of similar looking drives on ebay with slightly different model numbers,

typically ending 630AS or similar......

There's only one I've found with the exact same model number, £25 plus another £25 delivery from the US, quite a bit more than any UK based ones.

I've found one with the same number but ending A rather than AS.

How close do I need to be with the numbers?
 
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.firmwarefinder.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.firmwarefinder.com</a><!-- m -->
 
Just to keep this thread up to date:

antdad said:
http://www.firmwarefinder.com
Click to expand...

£80 from them, probably a better bet than the ebay find, and an investment I don't mind making, but one I'm reluctant to if it's not going to work!

Just under £700 from the same company to recover the data, could be worse I suppose ...... :shock:

I'm going to speak to my local PC store who have been ok in my previous dealings and see what they say about it all.

Max suggested this as a software recovery program:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.pcinspector.de/default.htm?language=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.pcinspector.de/default.htm?language=1</a><!-- m -->

Unfortunately it won't find the disc either, which I pretty much expected.

:evil:
 
Hmmmm none of the 'e-guides' mentioned that at all :?

That's not an amount it would make sense to pay, I'd sooner pay the recovery company £700 for more guaranteed results to be honest.
 
Another thing to try is to have your drive plugged in and then to boot your PC to say Puppy linux or Knoppix linux.

Get an iso from here, burn the disk and boot to it.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%20Latest%20Release.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%20L ... elease.htm</a><!-- m -->

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.knoppix.net/get.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.knoppix.net/get.php</a><!-- m -->

I have recovered data from many drives that Windows XP or Win7 could not recognise.

Have as few other drives plugged in if you do this as it will narrow down the search for the drives that you can mount.

Interface may seem clunky but take your time and it should make sense, if not let me know and I can send you screenshots etc.

Hope it helps.

Rob.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom