Seagate 2TB External HDD Problem

freakdemon

Honorable
Jul 21, 2012
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I have a Seagate External Drive 2TB ST320005EXA101-RK. My problem is this, it currently has 1.1 TB of files on it. It keeps asking me to format the drive all of a sudden when i plug it in now and when i go to my computer to look at it it only shows the drive letter and no capacity bar. I went to computer management/storage and it does not show it as NTFS, it shows it as being RAW, and it will not let me doing anything to change that. I thought possibly the drive went bad to i used a few tools to recover the files i.e. Lauch Data Recovery and Paragon Partition Manager, nothing is working. I have also have used SeaTools for Windows to check the drive and all tests including the long test shows the drive passed. Am I missing something ? Why can i not recover the files, why is it RAW and why does it not show properly in My Computer. Any other info needed to help with this can be provided and any help will be much appreciated.
 

willard

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Nov 12, 2010
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Sounds very much like a corrupted drive to me. Probably not physically damaged, but odds are pretty good that your data is gone. I've become less and less satisfied with Seagate over the years. Ten years ago when I started using them, they were a great alternative to Maxtor and the like (oh my god how I hated Maxtor), but these days the drives just don't seem very reliable.

In the last year, I've had my drive fail, get replaced (charged $20 by Seagate to do it), then have the replacement fail. Not planning to buy any more Seagate drives.
 

freakdemon

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Jul 21, 2012
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I did take it out of the enclosure, it didn't make a difference. The drive does pass all tests.....the only test i can't do is a CHKDSK since wondows isn't seeing the drive. I really at this point just want to try to recover the data, any suggestions ? Launch Data Recovery isn't seeing the drive to get the data.....any other software ?
 

willard

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Nov 12, 2010
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Best advice you can give on data recovery. Yes, you can do it yourself, but most people do more harm than good and permanently destroy data that a recovery specialist could have saved.

If the data is critical, take it to a specialist. If it's "nice to have" then do it yourself. If the data isn't that important, RMA the drive and stop buying Seagate.
 

foobar1

Reputable
Sep 6, 2014
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4,510
The Seagate drives are garbage right out of the box. I bought a 2 TB seagate USB disk as well. Out of the box the drive would continue to spin even when the computer was in sleep mode. Seagate tech support wasted several days of my time only to to tell me I can send it back to them (and get another crappy drive with the same problem as replacement).
Eventually after about 13 months my wonderful Seagate 2 terrabyte drive failed as it suddenly slowed down and there was file damage throughout the disk. 2 terrabytes of my personal data gone forever.

Of course, it was warrantied for only a year as only Seagate knows exactly how crappy its hard disks are, and they expect you to go out and buy a new drive from them every year so you can lose all your data a year later and repeat the process...reminds me of value-added retailer, Apple.
 

popatim

Titan
Moderator
Many people have great experiences with most harddrives. I have some of every brand and have relatively little problems with them. I've got 2tb seagates that have to be 4yrs old, WD greens that are 3yrs old, Toshiba's that are almost 2... Over the years, and I've been doing this a long time, I've found that how the drives are shipped play a more important role than who made them, once you weed out the poorer quality drives that is. I never buy brand new models; I give them a year to work out the bugs (the original wd green's come to mind LoL) and I never buy OEM drives unless I'm buying a box full: Packing and Ups/Fedex handling is usually horrendous.