Hard drive forums

[warrior047]

Hi,
My Seagate Goflex desk 2TB external drive working fine for 6 months. Suddenly, when I try to power on, the drive lights blink once and go off. When I try to hold the goflex drive in my hands, i feel like the drive is vibrating to some extent as if the power is on, but very very intermittently, i.e., the drive doesn't vibrate and is like its off, and some times, it vibrates as if the drive is spinning but this is rare. But all the time, the lights are off and the drive is not even detected by any means.

When contacted seagate, they say I have a failed drive. I have lot of precious data which I can't lose. That's when they suggested below first:

The suggestion is NOT to open the external case, it is to disconnect the drive from the base. After you disconnect the drive from the base, you will be able to see a SATA slot and power connector, which you can connect it to the internal of the drive.

Please note that the warranty is void if the casing is opened.

Can you please help me as to how to do this?

 

[hang-the-9]

Take the drive off the base (pull them apart), you may need to buy a sata cable to connect it to the PC if your PC does not have a spare hanging out somewhere. Open the case (with the computer off of course), plug in the sata cable to a free sata port on the motherboard, power plug off the power supply to the seagate, turn on the PC. It should detect the drive as a drive letter in Windows, copy the files as you like after that.

Note if it's an issue that's with the drive and not just the base, this won't work.

 

[warrior047]

Take the drive off the base (pull them apart), you may need to buy a sata cable to connect it to the PC if your PC does not have a spare hanging out somewhere. Open the case (with the computer off of course), plug in the sata cable to a free sata port on the motherboard, power plug off the power supply to the seagate, turn on the PC. It should detect the drive as a drive letter in Windows, copy the files as you like after that.

Note if it's an issue that's with the drive and not just the base, this won't work.

Thank you. So I should connect one Mobo SATA to the drive SATA and the power output plug to the power port of the drive. This is kind of a mini SATA port beside the main SATA slot on the drive.

If there is no free SATA on Mobo, then please confirm as to how can I proceed. Also, will this cause any damage to my hard drive for directly connecting to the SATA internlly? Some of my friends had such burst issue!

 

[hang-the-9]

There should be a free SATA on the motherboard, should be at least 4, and 2 should be free. As long as you don't hook the drive up when the PC is running will have no issues.

I have not seen that drive connection, but from what the tech was telling you, that's the procedure.

 

[jsrudd]

From your description, the smaller plug on the drive is actually the SATA port, the larger is the power plug.