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I'd probably rip it out of its shell and place it into a new enclosure. Hardware wise it came with a 5yr warranty if you still have the reciept. Here's a link that may help.
I realize it has been some time since someone posted to this thread but I am desperate. A few days ago I was moving something on my desk and a cable knocked my external drive over on its side. It was powered up but not being accessed. It did not hit flat on my desk but landed on top of my router. The light was still on but the drive was no longer being recognized by my PC. I could hear a very faint buzz about every 3 seconds. I unplugged it and then plugged it in again to see what would happen. The power light did not come on and I still heard the faint buzzing so I unplugged it and have done nothing with it. It is a 1 TB Seagate FreeAgent Xtreme. I checked with a few data recovery companies in Raleigh but they quoted $399 - $1,800 to retrieve the data. This is a unrealistic amount for an individual. The drive contains pictures and about 300 albums worth of mp3s that took me over a month to convert from tapes using Audacity. I can't see how falling over onto my router could have caused severe damage. At least not like dropping it.
Based on my description would the freezing method be the way to go, or should I try something else first?
A buzz to me would indicate an electrical problem, maybe a wire is loose inside the enclosure. You can open your external drive and buy a new cheap enclosure for under $10 from a place like Newegg or Amazon. If it's more of a clicking sound that may mean the platters are hitting and the drive is either on the way out or done. You could try to freeze it, I've tried it in the past without success. I've lost drives in the past and had some success with freeware recovery stuff but it is never fun and always time consuming.
If you don't already, I strongly recommend an offsite service that automatically backs up your data. I use a company that charges $50 a year for unlimited offsite storage (scans my computer and external drive daily for new files to back up).
I'd probably rip it out of its shell and place it into a new enclosure. Hardware wise it came with a 5yr warranty if you still have the reciept. Here's a link that may help.
I have read a lot of posts about using a different enclosure, but I am not sure how that works. By the "enclosure" are we talking about the outside plastic case? If so, how does that affect whether the drive works or not? OR, are we talking about something else? Sorry, if this sounds dumb, but this is all new for me. I have had a PC since 1988, but I never had a drive crash.
As far as the warranty is concerned - I am sure I have the receipt (I never throw anything away), but I am not sure how it comes into play when it comes to data recovery. Aren't they going to want to charge me the same exorbitant fee as the other data recovery companies? When I emailed Seagate a week ago here was their response:
"I understand that you are not able to access your drive. Have you tried a new cable or different usb ports. Have you tried the drive on another computer? If none of those things work for you I suggest you replace the drive."
When I replied that I had tried all those things, without success, and that just replacing the drive would not solve my data problem, and asked them to send me info on their data recovery services, they never replied.
You could try a USB/SATA adapter + SATA cable from ext HDD.
Thanks, I'll try that.
So that I can expand my understanding, if the drive does not spin up using USB and Firewire, even though both worked before, why might SATA have a different result?
I am mostly lazy so I don't back up. But for the future, you could use Mozy or a similar service which backs up your data as often as you want for a flat fee. It took about 5 hours to back up all my files and now they are backed up daily.
I'd probably rip it out of its shell and place it into a new enclosure. Hardware wise it came with a 5yr warranty if you still have the reciept. Here's a link that may help.
A buzz to me would indicate an electrical problem, maybe a wire is loose inside the enclosure. You can open your external drive and buy a new cheap enclosure for under $10 from a place like Newegg or Amazon. If it's more of a clicking sound that may mean the platters are hitting and the drive is either on the way out or done. You could try to freeze it, I've tried it in the past without success. I've lost drives in the past and had some success with freeware recovery stuff but it is never fun and always time consuming.
If you don't already, I strongly recommend an offsite service that automatically backs up your data. I use a company that charges $50 a year for unlimited offsite storage (scans my computer and external drive daily for new files to back up).
I hope you get your data back!
There is no clicking, just a soft intermitant buzz.
I searched Newegg for enclosures and got 377 results. How do I know which one to pick?
Also, how do I get the old enclosure off? The case is very smooth and does not even appear to have a way to pry it open.
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