broken hard disk drive

chrissiemac

Help!

My external hard disk drive is not working. I can see it on disk management but can't do anything with it or to it. I have tried connecting it directly to the motherboard, but then it doesn't show up anywhere. Is there anything I can do that won't involve paying a lot of money?

Thanks!

jessc_2001

- What type of external HDD is it?
- Have you checked it's user guide?
- When you say you can't do anything with it but can see it in disk management - what problems are you encountering?

kwikbreaks

I had a USB drive show those symptoms and http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download fixed it for me (it was a screwed up partition table). Worth a try but of course it may not work for you. As you can see the disk in disk manager it sounds like the caddy electronics must be working otherwise I'd suggest taking it to bits (often non-reversable) and trying the drive itself in a PC.

simon.griggs

Dear Chrissiemac,

When you connect this drive to the computer, right click My Computer if it is XP, or just Computer if it is Vista or 7. Select the option to Manage, then click Disk Management.

Do you see the drive there at all?

Regards


Simon

aardware

download Seatools for DOS (the bootable dos version, not the windows one). If that can't see it, then its probably not recoverable at all.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=SeaTools&vgnextoid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

However, if it can see it, it might be able to repair it, in which case copy all the data off it and get a new one.

If it can't repair it, it might still be recoverable. You can download free trials of Stellar Phoenix http://www.stellarinfo.com/ or Seagates data recovery for Windows https://services.seagate.com/diysoftware.aspx. These won't recover it, but they will tell you if its recoverable

Good luck, although, Its unlikely to be good news i'm afraid

chrissiemac

Hi
Thanks a lot for your posts.
It's Western Digital 500GB hard drive. I see it in disk management and I'm told it needs to be initialised, but it won't let me initialise it. I can't access the drive and it doesn't show up in explorer.

I downloaded the recommended software but haven't really got anywhere. First of all I downloaded Seatools for Windows. There was a lot of information about it there and I ran some tests. Some it passed, some it failed. Then I noticed you recommended I download Seatools for DOS. I did this but it didn't work. I'm not sure what went wrong. I don't think it even booted properly. I left it for about 90 mins without doing anything. I then rebooted and tried Seatools for Windows again, but it doesn't work now. Tried the Stellar Data Recovery but it doesn't show up there.

Any hints?

Thanks.

aardware

Sounds like you have some errors on your disk. It may or may not be fatal. Did you download the cd or floppy version of seatools?

Richie-from-the-Boro

- when you read the white label on the HDD, and know exactly what it is go here

- click on your drive number it will look something like [example WD1002FAEX] example

- and download ' data lifeguard ' for windows

- then come back here and let the group know you have the correct software

aardware

Excuse me for trying to help with the information to hand.

For the record, seatools for dos will do exactly the same things for any make of hard drive, not just seagate. It is not the "incorrect" piece of software.

I suspect, and will check when i get home, in much the same way that seagates "diskwizard" is just oem rebranded acronis (the same piece of software acronis use), that "data lifeguard" is just a rebranded version of the same software the seatools is.

chrissiemac

Again, thanks to you all for taking the time to answer my queries.

I downloaded the CD copy of Seatools. My pc doesn't have an A drive. I followed all the instructions very carefully, but very quickly into the boot up it stopped doing anything. I am happy to try again if I've done something incorrectly. I tested it again on Seatools for Windows and the results were:

S.M.A.R.T. unavailable
short drive self test - passed
long drive self test - passed
short generic - fail
long generic - fail (it counted the errors as it was testing and there were over 200)

I downloaded data lifeguard from WD website, but it didn't recognise the drive, so Richie-from-the-Boro, I don't know what you mean by "correct software".

aardware, as far as I can see on the Seatools website, you are right, because they specify what they can do for all drive and what they can do for Seagate only. This test they say they can do for all.

I spoke to a guy yesterday who said he could retrieve the info for £100 (min) but that is my last resort because of the cash and because I'd have to send it through the post. Any more thoughts, greatly appreciated!

ianian99

Ok it could be the actual external and not the drive itself.
Put it into your pc again but make sure you have the jumper in the correct position.

If its on its own ide slot then needs to be set for MASTER and if its on a cable with another drive it should be set to SLAVE (assuming the other drive/cd is set to MASTER.

Try that and see if its there. If it i then the external is at fault.
You might also need to go into bios and scan for hdd's before windows or anything else will see it.