Salvage failed drive

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K

Kaprice

Reputable
Jun 3, 2014
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4,510
My son's computer has a Seagate 500gb drive that started acting up. Everything in Windows became PAINFULLY slow.

I installed his drive in an extra slot on my computer and it slowed MY computer way down. Disk light stayed on constantly.

A drive letter would show up in Explorer, but the drive never showed a capacity bar and would never show content.

I ran Disk Management (the Win 7 built-in utility) but it would never get to the point it would show a list of drives.

When I take the drive out of my computer, everything is back to normal.

SO...

Are there any utilities that might salvage the drive, allow me to reformat and correct whatever the problem is? Or, is it likely toast?
 
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alyoshka

alyoshka

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Oct 2, 2009
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An easier way to go about it would be to put your son's HDD into an external USB enclosure.
Then boot up your rig, and connect that drive as a USB HDD, then scan it for errors, use the Seagate Disk Utilities from their website and salvage all the important data that he might need.
Then you can either check for warranty on the seagate website and if it's still valid, get the drive replaced, or, then just go ahaead and get a new one to put into your son's rig.
 
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K

Kaprice

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Jun 3, 2014
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4,510
Thanks for that. I have a hot swappable bay (SATA) in my case, which is what I used for my testing of his drive. Is a USB enclosure more likely to work than that? It seems to me it would still try to resolve it as a drive letter and still try to read the content but be unable to.

Also, it's just a 500gb drive, so buying a USB enclosure just to test it seems overkill when I can buy a replacement drive for $50.

I did check on the Seagate site and determined that this was an OEM drive and thus ineligible for RMA.
 
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alyoshka

alyoshka

Splendid
Oct 2, 2009
6,165
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27,915
Don't boot the rig with the drive plugged in.....
Boot up your rig and then plug the defective drive in.
A USB enclosure will help in solving your slowing down rig when you plug that drive in.
It's only after that that you can move ahead, but, as you suggested, a replacement is worth even lesser then, go for it if the drive ain't that important.
 
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K

Kaprice

Reputable
Jun 3, 2014
9
0
4,510
Actually, I tried it both ways. I booted with it and I also plugged it into a hot swap bay after Win was loaded. No luck either way.

I've ordered a replacement, but I hate to throw away 500gb if there's any way of salvaging it.

No other ideas?

I was hoping, maybe, there was a bootable utility that could somehow get to the drive outside Windows and fix it or at least analyze it.
 
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