Seagate free agent not detected

[marty111]

Hello,
i have a seagate freeagent goflex usb drive and when i plug it into the computer it causes explorer to hang and is detected in disk management but not in my computer. i have tried formatting it using recovery manager but it hangs on scanning disk. is their any way i can get the hdd to format without it hanging windows?

thanks for your help its appreciated.

 

[marty111]

i have had a thought would i be able to format it under linux then use it on windows?

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Marty,

Take a step back and tell the group what computer system you are using, the OS, what other components, HDD's, USB equiptment etc is attached.
Also if this USB drive is new or if it has been working perfectly for a period of time and how you use it. Also anything else that has recently been added to your system in way of hardware, driver updates, windows updates.

With the USB drive connected and turned on, boot up your system to the desktop. Then check in the Device Manager and see if it is recognized as a USB device, if it is not recognized, or if you have any yellow warning triangles there.

Lastly go to disk management, and see how it is recognized. Is it listed as a basic disk 1 or 2, how much space is allocated in the partition and if it is "healthy" and NTFS Formatted.

That will give the group info to work on.

 

[marty111]

the hdd is now working (although crippled by bad sectors) it is currently undergoing a long generic test i will post the results later today

my os is windows xp
the hdd is the only usb device attached
device manager (and windows are now detecting it)
the hdd's size is 250GB
the hdd is recognised as drive D
i have deleted the previous partion and created a new one.
the hdd is NTFS formatted
i have changed the drive's performance settings which appears to have made a diffrence.
the hdd is used as a backup drive
the hdd was previously healthy untill earlyer today

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Marty,

Glad to hear it is being recognized as a removable drive. If it is used just for backup, consider removing all partitions in Disk Management and either leaving it one single large partition, or setting a partition the size you desire. Then format the partition using NTFS file system. Takes 30-45 min.

When done, go to My Computer, right click on the Drive letter assigned that partition, click on Tools, then Check for Errors and run Chkdsk /f. If it reports no errors you are ready to use it for backup storage.

 

[slavenkata]

This weekend I solved the following problem:
My external HDD was not recognized by the computer. I am a Windows user.
The drive was not in My computer section, therefore no AutoPlay option, nothing. I checked it in the Device Manager/ Disk Manager and it was there. But no letter was assigned to it. I tried everything. This was successful:
1. First I assigned it a letter with software, called MiniTool Partition Wizard.
2. After that I run the program TestDisk. Here is How To Use It (http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/have-you-lost-a-hard-drive-partition-or-files-in-your-computer-194492.html)
3. Finally I checked the Disk Manager again, uninstalled the External HDD Device Driver, waited around 15 minutes and plugged it again. (I tried this few times before, but with no visible results).

VOALA! My HDD is working again!