wrr Loc: SEK

when you're all done with freezing, beating, boiling and whatever else you plan on trying, when you are at the point of chucking it in the trash, try this. On a side of the drive look for a piece of silver tape covering a small hole. Peel this tape back so you can see inside...what you may see is the edge of the platter. If so, take something that will fit and press against the side of the platter, then rotate it the small amount that the hole will allow. Maybe do this 2 - 3 times. Press tape back in place and hook drive up, with fingers crossed it will spin up and recovery can then happen.

Like I said, this is last ditch effort but I have recovered completely 4 drives doing this. Be prepared for this to be a long process, maybe a week or longer and don't let the machine be turned off until the operation is finished. Also I'd add, if you can get it back up and can see the drive in windows explorer, only try to copy a few files at a time...when I tried to copy more that 20 - 30 files at a time, it seemed to choke.

mdorn Loc: Portland, OR

Wendy,

I found the perfect how-to video for your situation! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iUEFAv24Og

spitfire99

I have an "if all else fails" suggestion. Seal your drive in a plastic bag an put it in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator. After an hour or so remove it from the freezer and see if it works. I know this sounds crazy but drives sometimes fail because some of the components lose their dimensional tolerances because of wear. Lowering the temperature is sometimes shrinks the components just enough to let your drive boot up one more time.

Pete

RocketScientist Loc: Littleton, Colorado

I'd suggest a skeet launcher and a shotgun instead.

RocketScientist Loc: Littleton, Colorado

"Whirr click" is never a good noise from a hard drive. If it is a backup and you have all the stuff elsewhere, just replace the drive. If you need to have the data professionally recovered, prepare to spend a lot of money or take your chances with one of the flat rate data recovery companies.

I would not take it to an OfficeMax or similar store. Software alone will not help with a drive that is clicking.

PW4GDF

THANK YOU ALL!
After 14 hours today the files I had backed up on my second oldest Seagate have been transferred to my new little (it is small in size)external drive. I am so thankful I did back up as much as I did to this drive. I may have lost some recent files but nothing that I really remember - yet. There are some more files to clean up off the laptop and my geriatric tower but I am thankful to have what I have. Now to purchase another external drive so as not to have a day like yesterday. I will freeze the old one, nothing to lose now but will leave it until I have more time. I did notice a plastic seal on on the top of it I maybe should have removed a few years ago, did it overheat? What ever. You think you have had a bad day until you hear about those firefighters who lost their lives. It gives you a slap in the face somewhat when you realize you still have a husband and be thankful for that. If the pictures were gone then it was my fault.
Take care everyone.
Regards,
Wendy
Cocoa, Florida

mdorn Loc: Portland, OR

Good news! You certainly have a healthy perspective. :-)

Lucian Loc: From Wales, living in Ohio

Wendy, the freezer thing will sometimes work but only if your original problem was an overheating problem and your time frame from when you take it out of the airtight freezer bag until it is too late due to overheating again, is about 30 mins or so maybe a little bit longer, if you are lucky.

Since yours was clicking it is mostly likely mechanical and not heated up circuit board failure, the freezer helps only the latter. If you keep trying different things you are only doing more harm than good. Best to leave it as is.

There are only a few true "Clean Room: data recovery centres in the USA and they are all very expensive. Seagate will not help you. They will offer you their data recovery centre help but it will start at a minimum of $700 and can go up to about $3,500. Any of the real data recovery centres will charge this much and more.

Most places you will try that offer this service for a much lower price will not be able to recover the data because iot will need to be dismantled and go into a "Clean Room", so you will probably be wasting your money.

Seagate will offer you a new Seagate but no data recovery unless you pay up. I know because last year I had three Seagates go in the space of about 4 months, all new.

My laptop had a 350GB HD and it was close to full so I went out and bought a hi-end Seagate 750GB and had it replaced. I had a 2TB Seagate external as a back up for my desk top as well as another 3TB Seagate external backing up everything. Both of these were about 3.5 months old.

I took a last holiday to Boston with my wife before our new daughter was born and had some superb shots from out 8 days all around the New England. I wanted to back these up when I got back but the 2TB Seagate was acting up and had been for a few weeks. It would open on the desktop and would show the amount used but it would be a black screen in the box. I could not access any data on it so kept saying I must call Seagate customer service to sort it out.

Then 28 days after I had the 750GB fitted into my laptop it failed completely sounding like yours and the dreaded blue screen came up with a note saying no HD could be found. Since the 2TB had been acting up I had not backed-up the Boston images.

I called Seagate customer service and they confirmed the laptop was dead after we went through tons of things to test. Then I asked about the 2TB acting up and we did tests as well on that and they said it too sounded like it was dead. Then I tried the 3TB and it too was acting up so I called back and again they confirmed it was dead. That is when they suggested their data recovery service. Free, you may think after having 3 Seagates go in the space of a total of 3.5 months, but no, it was going to cost me, and that is how I know of the cost starting at $700 min.

In the many months since I tried every place I could find and after explaining everything I had gone through to the cheaper places, they all felt they could not help me. All the expensive ones said they could probably help but there was no guarantee. They all started at about $700 and said it could go to $4,000, only one had a stating price of $500 but it was only for a limited amount of data recovery.

All the real recovery places said not to touch or move it around and just pack it well and send it to them. I could not afford their charges so all three are still here as expensive, no, make that priceless paper weights. I will never trust a Seagate again. Good luck with yours but from my research I would not play about with it much and not hold out too much hope for recovery, I'm sorry to say.

wrr Loc: SEK

read my post top of this page...if you can get to the edge of the platter and move it just a little bit, chances are it will spin up...you have nothing to lose...?

nocknock57 Loc: Castro Valley, CA

External hard drives generally have a useful life of five years, give or take. They are NOT designed to last forever. Otherwise, they couldn't sell you a new one. I have personally yet to have one last five years myself.

That being said, a 'true back up' system should consist of your computer (primary), one external back up on site and one external back up off site - you can choose between going to the cloud as opposed to schlepping a hard drive to and from another location for the off site choice. Next year my off site drive will be four years old and I intend to retire it before it fails. I will likely join the modern world and replace it with a cloud option.

Ultimately, we have to weigh the value of losing all of your data against the cost or inconvenience of properly backing up.

Hopefully you can recover your work. I too, find Office Depot a curious choice, although I don't speak from experience. I would say this: make sure you know who will be working on your device, and what their qualifications are. You likely will only get one shot to recover your data. Good luck and good thoughts. We'll keep our fingers crossed for you!

Rabbott Loc: Grass Valley , California

stick it in the freezer for a few hours,,, see if that helps.

romanticf16 Loc: Commerce Twp, MI

Be careful- sometimes they'll misunderstand and replace the drive without trying to recover data. If it is really important to save the data contact DriveSavers or Data Rescue or one of the other services with a clean room for data recovery. Depending on the size of the drive it may cost over 1K$

PuppyDoc Loc: Wisconsin

I generally won't speak ill of a product but this is one I have to... I own a small business and computerized things two years ago. We are not power users by any stretch. The main computer had 2 Seagate internal drives that both crashed and died within the first 18mos. Likewise, we had 3 Seagate externals for daily and weekly backups. To date, 2 of the 3 also crashed and died... I've used computers extensively for many years now. All previously had WD drives. I have only ever had one crash and it was about 5 years old at that time. WD replaced it for a nominal fee. To replace so many drives in such a short time, I just don't believe is a fluke... I will never own another Seagate drive!!

PW4GDF

Hello all, I am not sure why this Seagate issue has cropped up again, it was quite some time ago that I first posted about it and have not posted any thing recently. All I can tell you is that I have two differernt makes of 1TB external drives that I back up on both frequently.
Wendy

romanticf16 Loc: Commerce Twp, MI

Do you have a good UPS system between your wall outlet and your electronic equipment? As drives get larger and electronics are more complex- power surges are the main culprit, not outages.