Seagate 2TB disk not recognised by system

[Sapporo]

Yesterday one of my hard drives started acting funny, it became very slow and I tried to launch a game through explorer, but when I tried to go into the folder it said the folder was not found or corrupted.

I thought this might be the end so I backupped some information, not realising my backup drive was a partition of the same HDD (lol). It took maybe 20 minutes to copy 200MB of data, I think it really was dying.

After that I downloaded Seatools and did some tests, the drive information could be displayed, it passed the SMART and short generic test. At that point it was still recognised by the sytem, it just showed 3 empty partitions.

Today I'm afraid it's completely dead. I can hear it spin up when I boot my PC, but that's where it ends. It isn't detected in BIOS, disk management or in Seatools.

Is there any way to recover the information on this drive?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Sapporo.

I'd suggest that you try the drive with a different SATA cable/port to see if the same thing happens, or even better - a different computer. If you have no luck with that, then I'd recommend that you try accessing the HDD via Linux Live CD/USB, to see if it's properly recognized and if you can get to your files, or try with one of the data recovery software options from this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html. If the data is valuable to you, your last and probably most reliable option is a data recovery company.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[das_stig]

Run Seagate Seatools to check drive fitness, if the drive is not oem model, you should have 2 years warranty.

 

[Sapporo]

Hey there, Sapporo.

I'd suggest that you try the drive with a different SATA cable/port to see if the same thing happens, or even better - a different computer. If you have no luck with that, then I'd recommend that you try accessing the HDD via Linux Live CD/USB, to see if it's properly recognized and if you can get to your files, or try with one of the data recovery software options from this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html. If the data is valuable to you, your last and probably most reliable option is a data recovery company.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

Hi, thanks for the answer. I tried it with different Sata ports and its still the same issue. Will try my other computer, good idea, maybe it will find it. I will also give Linux a try, thanks. Did not know there was such an easy to use thing.

I already looked into the recovery companies, but that will probably cost me a few hundreds and not sure if it's that valuable.

Will try the linux and other pc options and report back. Thanks

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well it really sounds like the drive is the one that's acting up if it does the same with other ports and cables as well. I was hoping it would turn out to be a faulty SATA cable or port. Trying it with a different computer is kind of a long shot, but still you have nothing to lose, especially if you have that option. As for the Linux Live CD/USB, you could take a look here, about how to create Live USB: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

If worse comes to worst and everything fails, go ahead and follow @das_stig's advice and try to RMA it.

Good luck, mate!

 

[Sapporo]

Bit further, the drive appears in my explorer and 1 partition is available with the name. I can't click it though.

When i try to chkdsk the drive, it says: "chkdsk is not available for raw drives" so it looks like a broken boot sector? Maybe it can be fixed now the problem is sort of located. Just have to know how.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

The partition's could have became RAW (lost their files system) due to numerous faults. It could be corrupted data, bad sectors, damaged drive etc. It's concerning that the drive is not detected by Disk Management as usually when there's no physical damage and the partition is RAW you can see it there.
Except for trying with the already mentioned methods for data recovery, I'm afraid there's not much else you can do.

 

[andrewjcole]

Not sure if this will work, but it's worth a shot: http://www.z-a-recovery.com/articles/raw-filesystem.aspx

I haven't tried it myself though. After that, you could probably format the drive to NTFS through the command prompt and move stuff back if you want.