I think my HDD just died...

ZacD · Oct 2009

I was working in photoshop brainstorming for the hunter's challege, then my display shuts off but the computer keeps running, I turned it off with the power bottom, then it wouldn't boot, I test the ram and video card, finally I took out my HDD and tried it in my bros comp, it didn't show up under his computer after it booted. The weird thing is it doesn't make any noise, never had any issues before, and I can feel the disk spinning just fine, is there anyway I can recover the data without spending lots of money?

Hazardous · Oct 2009

You can always try the ziplock bag and put in the freezer trick - i can vouch for this ACTUALLY working.

Get a ziplock bag big enough for the drive to go in, wack it in there seal the bag up and then freeze it for a couple hours. Take it out and get it plugged into your machine pronto before all the condensation starts dripping everywhere, and boot up.

once it starts warming up, itll die - just rinse and repeat the proceedure you should be able to get a few good sessions out of it long enough to do a backup.

However be absolutely certain that this is your last resort and youve exhausted all other options. Because theres chances everytime the condensation will end the life permanently of your HDD.

ZacD · Oct 2009

Yeah, I don't know how well I could rip 500 gigs out of it, I'm calling Seagate in the morning and seeing what they can/will do, but I'd hate to have to send the drive in.

achillesian · Oct 2009

seagates like the best harddrive company because of the 5 year policy, good luck

pyromania · Oct 2009

When you say "it didn't show up". Do you mean it wasn't even detected by the BIOS when the computer first boots or its not showing up in the "My Computer" list. Its possible the partition or file system got corrupt but the physical disk is still ok. If the partition/file system is corrupt it won't show up in "My Computer"

Right click on the My Computer icon, go to Manage, then Disk Management. See if the hard drive shows up there. It may have the file system listed as Unknown. If the disk shows up in Disk Managment you may be able to repair the file system with something like GetBackData http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

Xaltar · Oct 2009

Pretty much stating the obvious here but you may have missed something.

1. Try it on a new sata cable (assuming its SATA)
2. Make sure your SATA controller is set the same on your brothers PC as it was yours, things like raid and other settings can cause the drive not to show in windows.
3. make sure your brothers PC has installed all needed drivers for SATA devices though I'm guessing his PC also uses a SATA drive.

For IDE (parralel ATA)
1.Be sure the jumpers on the drive are set to master
2. Put the drive on the secondary channel with its own cable (no other devices attached to it)
3. Make sure its detected in BIOS
4. If it shows up in BIOS then look under Device Manager and see if windows picks it up

Basic steps but I'm sure Seagate will run you through this. Good luck getting your data back, its the most annoying thing that can happen to your PC to loose data.

ZacD · Oct 2009

Apperently its a known issue http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/ I think I'll contact tech support tomorrow, I was at school all day today and didn't get the chance.

Got a 1tb for $84 bucks at microcenter, $5 bucks cheaper than newegg and no shipping

ae. · Oct 2009

Im having trouble with my external Hard drive when i copy files onto the my external HD it says that the files are no longer at that location?

does anyone know why this could be happening?

ZacD · Oct 2009

No idea, but I partitioned my new 1tb into 4 parts, but on 2 of them it will only let me put files on their after administor permission... weird

but otherwise, I am one happy Panda, Seagate tech support said it was a firmware issues and that there was free data recorvery services avalible, but I waiting for the data recorvery services to call back

I think my HDD just died...

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