Seagate HDD - Fix All Fast Test FAIL

[NateBeast]

Hi! I have had my Seagate 3TB HDD for around 5-6 months. Around 1 month ago, the drive started disappearing in my PC, so I plugged it into my other PC and copied all my data over. I then reset the drive, and put all my data back. The drive has been running fine now for 2-3 weeks but now it has started disappearing and will not come back anymore. SeaTools FixAll Fast test failed. Please help!

 

[The_Man12]

You need to replace the drive, it has failed. SeaTools won't be able to fix all errors on the drive, I would be surprised if it was actually able to do something to help. If you can back up your data to another hard drive and get it replaced.

 

[NateBeast]

I can't access the drive in Windows explorer, so how do I get the data? Also, why would the drive fail after like 6 months?

 

[Snipergod87]

Depending on the failure you may not be able to retrieve data. May have been a bad drive it happens. In general if a HDD is going to quickly it will do so within the first few months, than the failure rate quickly drops off.

However Seagate's 3TB drives have an extraordinary high failure rate. You should steer away from them.

 

[NateBeast]

So I need to buy a new HDD?
Also, why would it stop working and then work perfectly and then stop working again?

 

[Snipergod87]

You could RMA it for a replacement and try your luck with that, otherwise buy a new drive. As for the second part it depends on what happened.

Does the drive show up in device manager or disk management at all?

 

[NateBeast]

It does show up in device manager, and disk management shows the drive but as not initialized. I cannot initialize it however because "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"

 

[The_Man12]

The hard drive was already showing signs that it was going to fail when it started going offline and online intermittently. If you're lucky you may be able to get the data that's in it. You can RMA it, or just buy a new one. The HDD was most likely defective in the first place so maybe that's why it died kinda quickly.

If you do end up buying another HDD, I would suggest getting WD, Hitachi, or maybe some good known Seagate hard drives.

EDIT: You also MAY be able to get your data off the hard drive with a program called "Find and Mount", it may or may not work, but it's worth a try.

 

[NateBeast]

Well the program shows my HDD as 4 GB, so idk how well it will go.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there NateBeast,

That is really unpleasant. 🙁
As you were facing some issues with the drive, you shouldn't have stored your data back on it.

Most probably, the drive has failed. Yet, it will not hurt to attach the drive with different cables to another port. In many cases, I/O(input/output) error, could be caused by bad cables.

In case the issue persists and the drive appears as 4 GB(you can go to BIOS and see if it appears like that over there), then the drive has failed. I doubt that you will be able to retrieve the data, unless you contact a data recovery company. You can try some other data recovery tools though.

If the drive is under warranty, just RMA it, as the other guys said.


Apart from all this, you need to keep in mind that initialization, is a data destructive process.


Let me know in case you have some more questions,
D_Know_WD