Seagate FreeAgent 1tb external hd issues

[nlmiller1975]

I have a Seagate FreeAgent 1tb external hd that is no longer working properly. When I plug it in to my comp, it takes forever to be recognized, luckily it's being recognized at all, I guess. Unfortunately, it's being recognized as "Local Disk: (G)" as opposed to FreeAgent. When I click on it to look at the files, the bar at the top seems as though it's reading and progressing, but when it gets close to the end, it stops. Sometimes it says "not responding." Yet other times I get some sort of I/O error. Other times still it says that I need to format the hd.

I really, really need to be able to access these files as they contain home videos and pictures of my little ones that I do not have anywhere else. =/ Yes, completely my bad because I hadn't backed them up anywhere.

I tried the Seatools diagnostic long generic test, and it failed. I also tried r-studio and I got as far as the scan. The screen says that there are read errors at position 0, 512, 1024, etc. Every one of them in multiples of 512. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error (1117).

Any suggestions, please?

 

[dznutz]

so you took it out of the casing and stuck it in your pc? if so then you got issues.

try holding it in your hand TIGHTLY and swing it vertically.... like swinging a baseball bat. maybe there's static holding it down.

if that doesn't work i'd go to recover your drive. depending on the level of error this is expensive. especially when you hear clicks when the drive is starting up.... this means hardware level damage.

standard seagate 1tb+ drives seem to be of low quality. for future purchaes of large drives go for samsung/western digital

 

[Nanobyte]

Before things go completely belly-up you could try running some of the file recovery software that's available, such as Recuva. They may be able to ignore errors and identify some files that you can copy. A long shot though. If you regularly defrag the drive then there is better chance of recovery. Professional recovery is very expensive and you have no guarantee of success.

One application that I've seen work with reasonable success is ESS's Fast File Recovery which seems to be SaveMyFiles today. They have a free download which probably will tell you what is recoverable. Then you have to pay $99. Try the freeware first.