Seagate external HD stopped working. Have tried many things, any other idea?

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phapthe

Commendable
Mar 4, 2016
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1,520
Hi everyone,
I can't access my external hard drive anymore. It is a 1TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive.It was working perfectly fine just a few days ago, but the next day stopped showing in My Computer, though the light on the HD is on.

I've tried many things suggested online but to no avail:
- trying in on another computer > same problem
- changing USB cable > didn't help
- refreshing USB ports by plugging and unplugging other devices > didn't help
- updating driver > didn't help
- going to the Device Manager, disk drives. my HD appears and when I right click, properties, it says 'this device is working properly', however when I go volumes > the populate button doesn't work.
- downloading and using the SeaTools program > it scans for a USB device for ever

Am I to conclude that my HD is physically damaged? I don't remember having been violent with it.

What are my options now? All my personal data + work is (was?!) on that HD. Any help would be very much appreciated!!
Thanks for reading,
Paul
 
Solution
P
Hi,
Thank you very much for replying.
I finally managed to repair it myself with the help of Youtube videos.
The strange clicking sound made by the hard drive upon being plugged indicated that the head was stuck in the platter. So here is how I solved the problem (for free!!! no need to spend hundreds of dollars):
In a clean environment, I used a guitar pick to open the case, took the aluminum protections out, unscrew the hard drive (including one hidden screw under a plastic piece). Then with a screw driver I turned the little screw in the middle of the platter in a counter-clockwise direction while, using my finger, I put the head back to its original place.
I retrieved all my data thanks to this technique.

Now I'm using Google Drive...
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JaredDM

JaredDM

Honorable
Jul 8, 2015
716
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11,665
Seagate is currently experiencing seriously high failure rates on their hard drives. In 3TB models it's near 40% failure rate in some applications. So sudden failure is actually quite common on them. First off, if the drive is making any odd noises then you'll need to seek out professional recovery.

Second, if the drive sounds normal you might try taking it out of the enclosure and directly connect it to a desktop computer motherboard. These don't use any USB bridge encryption like the WD externals do, so the data won't be encrypted. Check to see if the drive appears in BIOS and shows correct capacity. If it shows wrong capacity, wrong ID, or just causes the system to hang and refuse to boot it's likely a hardware/firmware issue.

If the internal drive is a DM model (E.G. ST1000DM001, or similar) then it may well be an issue with the media cache or auto-reallocation functions and can easily be recovered by a professional laboratory with tools such as PC-3000. Shouldn't cost more than $400-600.
 
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P

phapthe

Commendable
Mar 4, 2016
2
0
1,520
Hi,
Thank you very much for replying.
I finally managed to repair it myself with the help of Youtube videos.
The strange clicking sound made by the hard drive upon being plugged indicated that the head was stuck in the platter. So here is how I solved the problem (for free!!! no need to spend hundreds of dollars):
In a clean environment, I used a guitar pick to open the case, took the aluminum protections out, unscrew the hard drive (including one hidden screw under a plastic piece). Then with a screw driver I turned the little screw in the middle of the platter in a counter-clockwise direction while, using my finger, I put the head back to its original place.
I retrieved all my data thanks to this technique.

Now I'm using Google Drive for online data backup.

Have a good day
 
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