External Hard Drive Issues

[Shmecklesberainin]

I was copying files to my Seagate 2 TB external drive, when it just disconnected!

Now it won't connect at all. The light isn't blinking, but I can hear and feel the disk inside running.

It is detected by BIOS, but on Disk Management it says "Unallocated" even though I still have data on it.

What do I do?

 

[DR_Luke]

Which model of Seagate external drive is it? Is it a portable USB or a desktop USB with a power cable? Is there valuable data on the drive that you cannot live without?

 

[Shmecklesberainin]

It's a portable Hard Drive. I have very important data on there. I'm thinking about bringing it to a place in Utah called PC Laptops to see if I can get the data recovered.

Any other tips?

 

[DR_Luke]

If your data is valuable, I don't suggest you take your drive to just any computer technician. You don't need a kid out of high school on minimum wage messing around and making things worse. Rather, you should look for a reputable data recovery lab. Labs that I find trustworthy and affordable are:

Recovery Force
Data Medics
Data Savers
PC Image
Data Busters
Mind Merge

Call around to find a lab that you feel comfortable with.

 

[Shmecklesberainin]

I think something might be wrong with the MBR. How can I fix this without losing the pictures?

 

[DR_Luke]

The odds that sector 0 randomly disappeared is not likely.

Partition Showing As RAW

 

[Shmecklesberainin]

It was working just fine, then it disconnected and now the light isn't glowing and it won't connect.

I can still hear and feel the disk spinning inside.

 

[DR_Luke]

You can try to connect to the drive directly by removing it from the enclosure and see how it behaves when connected directly to your system. You can also attempt to clone the drive with ddrescue (Guide to ddrescue), but take note that if the drive is failing, everything you do could make things worse.

 

[Shmecklesberainin]

Is Kroll Ontrack good?

 

[DR_Luke]

Where are you located?

 

[Shmecklesberainin]

Where are you located?

I'm from Utah.

 

[DR_Luke]

Labs I recommend in North America, if you don't want to pay an arm and a leg for fancy sales pitches and big marketing teams are:

Recovery Force
Data Medics
Data Savers