SATA Drive Spins on NAS Base But Nowhere Else

[Circa 3000]

Hi all,

For months, my Seagate GoFlex Home (NAS) was randomly disconnecting from the network, but cycling power always returned things to normal. Today, the drive won't come up at all. I can hear it spin up, some head activity, and then it spins down.

Convinced that this is a problem with the NAS base, I moved the drive to a GoFlex Desk base, effectively converting it to a USB drive. Here, it won't spin up - it emits a quiet beep tone every second. Moving it back to the NAS base, it returns to prior behavior - spins up and tries to come alive again.

Reading somewhere that a beep indicates insufficient power to the drive, I suspected an incompatibility with the USB base, ditched it, popped the drive from its enclosure (turns out its a Seagate ST32000542AS) and installed it inside an older desktop computer. Oddly enough, it beeps there too!!! Again, returning the drive to its NAS base, the beep goes away and the drive tries to spin up. Huh?!?!

So, ironically, the drive completely dies when attached anyplace from which I can run diags or attempt to recover data. On its NAS base, where it is completely isolated and unreachable for diagnostics, it spins up and might even be readable - who knows?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Dave

 

[WyomingKnott]

Can you eliminate the "bases" entirely and put the drive inside your machine, directly connected to the motherboard controller and to the power supply? That would eliminate some variables.

"All of your base are provide insufficient power!"

Or could there be something wrong with the drive? Do you have another drive that you could try in the same base-thingie?

 

[Circa 3000]

Thank you for replying!

Yes, I attached the drive directly to the motherboard of two separate computers and also got the beep w/o spinup. Furthermore, neither computer would recognize the drive in BIOS.

I am beginning to believe that the drive has indeed failed. I've since put it back on the NAS base and it's beeping there too - never happened before. <sigh>

Because it kept failing and recovering, I can't help but believe that the platter and data are still good. I wonder what my data recovery options are. I have an identical drive (which was supposed to be mirroring this one - don't ask). Is there anything I can do to get the platter into a working drive? Swap the controller?

Any recommendations are greatly appreciated!

Dave

 

[WyomingKnott]

I'm going to plead the Fifth and keep my mouth (fingers?) shut. Some people on the forums believe that this is quite doable; some believe that experts can do it in some cases but amateurs shouldn't waste their time.

See fzabkar's post here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=32&post=283787&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0 , and let us know if you succeed. Good luck.

 

[Circa 3000]

See fzabkar's post here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=32&post=283787&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0 , and let us know if you succeed. Good luck.

This is awesome. And by "awesome," I of course mean, how dare you tempt me with such badness?! Thank you! 😀

 

[Circa 3000]

Best answer selected by Circa 3000.