Rod Cooper asks:
My computer recognizes the drive, but stops short of opening. You can observe the loading bar, but when it gets close to the end, it just freezes. The light is on, there are no strange sounds and you can feel the HD vibrating when you hold the unit. There was a power failure when the unit was plugged into my computer and it was dropped once. It’s a 1 TB Seagate Free Agent GoFlex ext.port. HD. Any ideas?
Browser: Explorer 8
System: Windows xp
Tagged: external hard drive, hardware issue, hardware recognition, windows tips
System: Windows xp
Tagged: external hard drive, hardware issue, hardware recognition, windows tips
5 Answers -
Bruce Epper
June 10, 2012Windows attempts a ridiculous number of read attempts of bad sectors before finally giving up which is what causes a “freeze” condition with a damaged device. So, try to mount it using a Linux LiveCD in read-only mode and transfer any data to another device first in order to recover as much data as possible. The last time I had to do this about 2 months ago, I was able to save almost everything from a drive that had thousands of bad sectors (hardware itself was failing quickly).
Once you have recovered as much data as you can, you can try mounting the drive in read/write mode and running fsck.ntfs. I have never attempted this myself, but it may be able to fix the problems with the drive. You could also attempt to reformat the drive at this point as well. Due to the assumed errors on the device, you may also want to just try to remove all partitions on the drive in Linux (to avoid the Windows freezing issue) and then do the reformat operation from Windows if it is easier for you.
ha14
June 10, 2012use windows restore point to revert back to earlier state before the accident.
Is it external hard drive?
go to device manager locate the hard drive right click on it and choose uninstall, reboot and replug hard drive.
try this microsoft solution
http://support.microsoft.com/mats/hardware_device_problems/en-us
Dave
June 10, 2012If you are plugging it into the front usb try to plug it into the usb at the back of your Pc which plug into the motherboard, this worked for me.
Himanshu Singla
June 10, 2012For the best solution..i think you must contact seagate customer support..
Richard Gailey
June 11, 2012As @Dave said, try plugging the USB into one of the main USB ports that directly connects to the motherboard, which are usually at the back of the PC.
Another thing to try if you think that the HDD might be failing, is to get yourself a USB to Sata/IDE cable. I have done quite a few rescues of HDD’s in the past for friends and family and this bit of kit has been my main go to when dealing with failing or broken devices. The only time it didn’t work was due to the logic board on the HDD being fried. When that happened, I just bought an identical make and model of the HDD and used the logic board from that on the broken one. I was then able to grab the data from it.
Here is a link to the USB to Sta/IDE (it can be used on 2.5/3.5 and 5.25 devices and is very simple to use)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001A5SK56/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00