FreeAgent Products

[rockerannah]

Our business has been using the 1TB Free Agent harddrive to back up our business information for several months now and all of a sudden it stopped connecting. When plugged in, it makes a beeping noise constantly and will not show up on the computer. It isn't recognized as being connected at all.

I looked through past posts but none of them had the same exact problem or same harddrive and the one that was similar, had not been answered so I have not been able to find any solution thus far.

What could be causing this drive to stop connecting/working after months of good usage? Thanks in advance for any help you may have!

[fzabkar]

If you value your data more than your warranty, you will need to remove the drive from its enclosure and test it by connecting it directly to your computer's motherboard.

I'm assuming your FA is powered from an AC adapter, not from a USB port.

[rockerannah]

Yes it is powered through a wall outlet and then connected via usb to the computer. No ideas what could be causing this without having to open it up and all of that?

[ayo oyr]

I am having the same problem with my extreeme 1.5T.  It just decided to stop working one day. It keeps humming periodically when I plug it.  I tried checking the s/n and p/n but it gave me data error while verifying s/n and p/n for warranrty

[fzabkar]

If you have dropped your drive, then there is a good chance that the spindle motor bearing has seized.

Another possibility is a stiction problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

Did you overvolt the drive with the wrong AC adapter?

Is the drive vibrating as if trying to spin up?

[rockerannah]

Yes the drive is vibrating as if it is trying to spin. Nothing lights up on the drive but itm akes a beep/buzz noize each time it vibrates and tries to spin. To my knowledge it hasn't been dropped unless someone else at our office did and didn't tell us which is a possibility. Does this mean it is broken/data is lost? What should be done?

[fzabkar]

If the bearing has seized, then data recovery will be very costly. :-(

If it's a stiction problem where the heads have stuck to the platters, then sometimes a gentle whack may dislodge them. Just don't do it with the drive powered up. This "percussive maintenance" technique used to work with my old 6.4GB IBM drive, but I'm not recommending it. It's your decision.

[rockerannah]

So aside from taking it apart myself (which I'm not even going to attempt to do), how will I know what is wrong with it for sure? Should I see if my drive is still under warranty and contact Seagate that way or is there another method?

Thank you for your help thus far.

[gappa]

How do I fix it? All of my photos are on it wedding last 10 yrs of my life I was fixing another computer and backed everything to this 1TB and nothing else. Please help!!!

[fzabkar]

The warranty checker is here:

http://support.seagate.com/customer/warranty_validation.jsp

Warranty does not entitle you to free data recovery, only drive replacement.

You can ask the data recovery professionals at HDD Guru for their opinions:

http://forum.hddguru.com/hard-disk-drives-data-recovery-and-repair-f1.html

Here are some sound samples from failed drives:

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

http://web.archive.org/web/20051016010750/http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/knowtree.nsf/cffe836ed7c12018862565b000530c74/4b1a62a50f405d0d86256756006e340c?OpenDocument