External Hard Drive Recovery
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I have a Seagate 5gb drive that my PC's are not longer seeing. I'm hoping it's not lost. Is there any good tools out there for diagnosing & recovering drives?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is. Everything makes sense in someone's mind. Ya can't fix stupid.
Oh, you probably know this, but if you do have to transfer the platters to another drive... keep them far, far, far away from magnets during the process. And don't let the oil on your fingers get on them.
Jeremy Falcon
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I have a Seagate 5gb drive that my PC's are not longer seeing. I'm hoping it's not lost. Is there any good tools out there for diagnosing & recovering drives?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is. Everything makes sense in someone's mind. Ya can't fix stupid.
Is it a HDD with a mechanical failure? As in, do you hear the head attempt to move at all on the platter? If that's the cause, you'll need to _carefully_ transfer the plates to another drive first. If that's not the case and it's just a corrupted table maybe with a few bad sectors, most file recovery software can help with that. More importantly, I haven't used HDDs in years, but even back then Seagate is what you used when you don't care about reliability. If it's important, remote backups or a RAID. If it's not important, move on with life. :)
Jeremy Falcon
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Yes, I think it's spinning up. It's already in an external case
If it's not broken, fix it until it is. Everything makes sense in someone's mind. Ya can't fix stupid.
Can you hear the head moving or is it just the platters spinning?
Jeremy Falcon
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I have a Seagate 5gb drive that my PC's are not longer seeing. I'm hoping it's not lost. Is there any good tools out there for diagnosing & recovering drives?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is. Everything makes sense in someone's mind. Ya can't fix stupid.
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There should have been a backup. "Hope" isn't a viable long term strategy.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
"Hope" isn't a viable long term strategy.
Rats!
>64 Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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I have a Seagate 5gb drive that my PC's are not longer seeing. I'm hoping it's not lost. Is there any good tools out there for diagnosing & recovering drives?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is. Everything makes sense in someone's mind. Ya can't fix stupid.
As others have said, if the drive isn't being seen at all by the host PC, it's unlikely any software will be able to offer much of a solution. A data recovery service might move its platters to a drive with an identical board. How valuable is that data to you? I'm not even going to mention backups at this time. I know the feeling, and it's not a good one.
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Is it a HDD with a mechanical failure? As in, do you hear the head attempt to move at all on the platter? If that's the cause, you'll need to _carefully_ transfer the plates to another drive first. If that's not the case and it's just a corrupted table maybe with a few bad sectors, most file recovery software can help with that. More importantly, I haven't used HDDs in years, but even back then Seagate is what you used when you don't care about reliability. If it's important, remote backups or a RAID. If it's not important, move on with life. :)
Jeremy Falcon
I almost guarantee it's a drive controller problem. Seagate drives do this to me too.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I don't buy Seagates because that happens. Their drive controller circuitry just up and quits. Mine have come back periodically. Randomly. But no recovery tools will work on a drive with a dead controller.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
When my Seagate recently failed to be seen by my PC, I pulled it out of computer attached to a SATA to USB cable, put on it top of a freeze pack from fridge and fired it up. It was heat problem with controller. I was able to pull all the data off to another external drive. Replaced it (grrr with a spare seagate drive copied data back and done. Yes, I hope I have better luck with my spare seagate (Barricuda). This is second time I have saved a drive using a freeze pack.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger
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You could send it to a data recovery outfit, but it won't be cheap. They'll take the drive apart in a clean environment and pull stuff right off the platters, or even simply replace the drive controller. I don't think there's anything *reliable* you can do yourself. I've had two do exactly what yours is doing. The only thing you might be able to do on your own is what I did. Leave it in your machine and pray. One day, when you boot, the little hamster in the thing will come back to life and the drive will enumerate. At that point copy everything you have. PSA: Seagate's commercial stuff is supposedly good. Their consumer gear is a dumpster fire in my experience. Multiple bad drives with your issue.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
I see reports like the following pop up every once in a while. I think have seen them show up from different sources but the number of drives covered is always amazing to me. Notice 171,000+ drives. Hard Drive Failure Rates for Q1 2021[^]
honey the codewitch wrote:
Seagate's commercial stuff is supposedly good
I think the following from the above suggests they agree with you. "...that the 18TB Seagate drives...Customer development units are mechanically complete, but the firmware is considered non-production and as such the drives are considered test drives."
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There should have been a backup. "Hope" isn't a viable long term strategy.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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When my Seagate recently failed to be seen by my PC, I pulled it out of computer attached to a SATA to USB cable, put on it top of a freeze pack from fridge and fired it up. It was heat problem with controller. I was able to pull all the data off to another external drive. Replaced it (grrr with a spare seagate drive copied data back and done. Yes, I hope I have better luck with my spare seagate (Barricuda). This is second time I have saved a drive using a freeze pack.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger
That's good to know. You might tell the OP that. I'm sure he'd like to know.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I have a Seagate 5gb drive that my PC's are not longer seeing. I'm hoping it's not lost. Is there any good tools out there for diagnosing & recovering drives?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is. Everything makes sense in someone's mind. Ya can't fix stupid.
When my Seagate recently failed to be seen by my PC, I pulled it out of computer attached to a SATA to USB cable, put on it top of a freeze pack from fridge and fired it up. It was heat problem with controller. I was able to pull all the data off to another external drive. Replaced it (grrr with a spare seagate drive copied data back and done. Yes, I hope I have better luck with my spare seagate (Barricuda). This is second time I have saved a drive using a freeze pack.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger
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That's good to know. You might tell the OP that. I'm sure he'd like to know.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Sorry. OP means Original Poster or Original Post depending on the context. In this case I'm referring to @kevinmorois I hope I spelled your name right, Kevin! :) Edit: Never mind. I see you already did!
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Sorry. OP means Original Poster or Original Post depending on the context. In this case I'm referring to @kevinmorois I hope I spelled your name right, Kevin! :) Edit: Never mind. I see you already did!
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I have a Seagate 5gb drive that my PC's are not longer seeing. I'm hoping it's not lost. Is there any good tools out there for diagnosing & recovering drives?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is. Everything makes sense in someone's mind. Ya can't fix stupid.
React [Go to Parent] When my Seagate recently failed to be seen by my PC, I pulled it out of computer attached to a SATA to USB cable, put on it top of a freeze pack from fridge and fired it up. It was heat problem with controller. I was able to pull all the data off to another external drive. Replaced it (grrr with a spare seagate drive copied data back and done. Yes, I hope I have better luck with my spare seagate (Barricuda). This is second time I have saved a drive using a freeze pack.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger
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I almost guarantee it's a drive controller problem. Seagate drives do this to me too.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Oh snap. Yeah, wouldn't surprise me.
Jeremy Falcon
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
"Hope" isn't a viable long term strategy.
hmmm....I hope I outlive that a**hole across the street so I can dance on his grave. So you are saying I am wasting my time?
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I have a Seagate 5gb drive that my PC's are not longer seeing. I'm hoping it's not lost. Is there any good tools out there for diagnosing & recovering drives?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is. Everything makes sense in someone's mind. Ya can't fix stupid.
I have recovered data from a drive which had an obviously blown component on its control board, by replacing such board with one from an identical (near enough) drive sourced from Ebay. Less hassle than transplanting the platters (which I have never done). But if it truly is only 5GB it will be very old and almost certainly unavailable.
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I have recovered data from a drive which had an obviously blown component on its control board, by replacing such board with one from an identical (near enough) drive sourced from Ebay. Less hassle than transplanting the platters (which I have never done). But if it truly is only 5GB it will be very old and almost certainly unavailable.