dustman

Everybody said back up your stuff, back up your stuff, so I went out and plunked down $160 the summer before last for a new Seagate 300GB 2.0 USB external hard drive (with firewire, which I really didn't need, and never used). I put all my stuff on the hard drive (probably using all of 25-30GB, but it was important docs, pics, and some music) and since then I have only turned the danged thing on about 20 times total. Yesterday it just quit. The little blue light comes on, and it sounds like something may be moving inside, but it doesn't have the robust whirring sound it used to, the little icon no longer pops up in the tray, the Seagate doesn't show up in device manager any more, add-remove hardware can't find it, and I am dead in the water. I contacted Seagate. They said you had a 1-year warranty. Sorry. I asked if there was any way to retrieve my data. Reply: Your drive has failed, most likely your data is lost. Sorry. Fry's had told me Seagate (aka Maxtor) was the best out there, and would last for years and years, very reliable. Well, you can't prove it by me. It really irks me that I am now looking at buying a new external HD (external so I can take it from computer to computer easily), and probably having to hand more of my hard-earned shekels to Seagate for another crap-shoot. Some of their new HDs have a 5 year limited warranty, but it is so full of holes and weasel clauses it doesn't look like they have to step up to the plate no matter what happens to it. I take very good care of my stuff, it is always babied, no one touches it but me, no kids, etc and it looks brand new. Does anybody have any input besides I'm SOL? Seagate already told me that. I really would like to retrieve my data. Is there a regular internal HD inside this sucker that I can work with? Any ideas?

Dustman

rbxslvr

I don't think you can get the data back if the drive is messed up. I mean, you can... but it is NOT EASY... at all.

My suggestion would be to buy another hard drive to replace the one in the external enclosure, and load the data onto it (...you said the external drive was for backing up stuff, so just copy the original files). You could buy one off of ebay cheap... I'd go with a maxtor, say 100gb. Before buying a drive, open up the enclosure, try the current drive in your desktop computer... and make sure you know whether it is SATA or PATA (IDE).

Even though Seagate has "aquired" Maxtor, I'd still get a Maxtor. Maxtor drives have been, by far, the most reliable and durable hard drives I've seen and worked with. I just recently bought a Maxtor 750gb Internal SATA drive from eBay, but before that, I was running several other maxtor drives, for pure reliability/stability reasons.

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dustman

Thanks, RBXSLVR,

I think I will give Maxtor a try. I've been seeing a lot of complaints online about Seagate's new FreeAgent Pro and desktop external drives on sale everywhere. Many of them seem to be failing within a week or two after purchase. Even with the 5 year warranties, that means losing all your data constantly and sending the units back and forth to Seagate. I'm annoyed enough with them as it is! LOL

Thanks again,

Dustman

dznutz

have you taken the drive out of the case and slaved it into the computer? most likely the external casing or something related to it was damaged/corrupted but not the hdd.

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NuTech

did you mean an employee @ Frys? I used all brands of HDs and out of them all seagate is usually the one that died on me. try plugging it into another computer to see if it loads.