FreeAgent Products

[calibretto]

I have a SeaGate FreeAgent external hard drive. Earlier today it was working fine. Now it's not even recognized. I lost the drive letter in My Computer. The drive was plugged in through a USB hub, so I unplugged the hub and plugged the drive directly into my computer. At first I got an error saying the USB device could not be recognized and in Device Manager under USB conrollers I had an unknown device that had no drivers installed. I tried to update the drivers, but no dice. I thought a reboot may be all I needed and when my computer came back up, I had nothing. No failed USB devices, no unknown devices in Device Manager. Nothing. My computer doesn't see that the drive is plugged in at all. I've tried every USB port on my computer and on the USB hub. Nothing happens in Windows when I plug the drive in. I never hear the sound letting me know Windows has recognized a new device. And I've plugged other devices into the ports to make sure they weren't the problem and they all seem to work fine. I even tried plugging the hard drive into another computer and it's not seen there either. My hard drive has power, the light is on, but no one seems to be home. Is it shot? Can anyone help me out here? Thanks in advance.

[bucephalus]

Calibretto:
I had exactly the same problem.
It was a bad usb cable. Read my post of Feb 8th.
It's worth a try.

[calibretto]

I thought about that myself.  So I switched USB cables with my USB hub.  The hub was working fine, so I knew that cable was working fine.  The hard drive still isn't recognized.  Nothing's ever that easy with me.

calibretto

[Rumplestilskin]

Hi, I`ve had the same thing happen with a FreeAgent Pro 320 GB external hard drive early this week.  It had been working fine, then my computer stopped recognising  it. No sight  of it ,or the drive letter that used to be there.  I`m a musician with a lot of recorded projects on this drive that I have no access to.  I`m in the process of trying to find a solution ,  I`ve worked my way through all the "trouble shooting" help files with no success. Now I`m searching the forums .  It`s kind of ironic that all these lost files were diligently copied as backup onto the same hard drive that I no longer have access to.  Brilliant! ....not only that but I find out that theses hard drives "will fail at some point".   Man ...live and learn....Why should I even bother to get one of these things?........Maybe to keep the self perpetuating and lucrative "file retrieval" business flourishing.  haha.   Hey...if I find a solution I`ll email back, Hope you can do the same for me.   Thanks in advance....  

[Lukas]

Hi

Having the same problem! If anyone have an answer to this please let me know!

Luke

[Geno]

Hi All,

I have the same drive and here is what I have experienced:

1. Using a usb hub or a usb direct port, I would get the "Delayed Write Error" message. The drive would then be useless. I would unplug the power cable and usb cable the plug them back in... sometimes this fixed the problem briefly, and sometimes the drive just dissappeared. If I leave it unplugged for 30 min or so, it always comes back.

2. I bought and installed a dedicated Esata card. I got the same results.

3. After reading messages here, I tried turn off the light. This seemed to make the drive work longer before it would fail.

I believe it is a heat related problem causing it to fail. I noticed that the bottom of the drive, where the usb and Esata card is, gets very hot. So I tried a couple of those little stick on heat sinks. This has made the drive work MUCH longer before failing. I guess a fan will be my next move.

I have looked at a folder with pictures in it and watched the drive slowly fail to put up the thumbnails on the screen. I can blow on the heat sink I installed and the drive starts working briefly again. I guess turning off the lights on the drive lets it run cooler and therefore last longer.

Seagate should do something about this issue. Maybe fix the heat problem and ship new boards to us? The bottom could be made taller and a fan and heatsink installed. I'm going to try that myself.

Sorry if I'm a bit long winded

Geno

[mp]

Hi,

I had a similar problem with my three week old FreeAgent Desktop 500GB. Was working fine up until about last Friday. I noticed that the light was off and when I reset the power, the light would come on for about 20 seconds and then go off again. I tried it on my work laptop - worked fine!

I then remembered that I had taken some critical Win XP updates recently on my desktop, so I uninstalled them, rebooted and voila! my external drive was working again. I have not been game to re-install the updates again. The updates were:

KB944533 - Cumulative Security Update fro IE 6 for Windows XP
KB943055 - Security Update for Windows XP
KB946026 - Security Update for Windows XP

They appeared to have been released around Feb 13. So it could be worth a shot uninstalling them and see if you get the same result. When I get enough time I might have a bit more of a play, but for now, it's working a treat!

Cheers!

Mark

[Ken1]

Within the past hour I unpacked a new FreeAgent 500GB External Drive.  While doing my first back up I noticed the light would dim and finally the drive power would drop.  This problem was traced to a defective AC power connector to the external drive.  Tomorrow I'll return it to the store.

[Volly]

I am having a similar issue,  except more spurious. 

The drive has turned up as unrecognised twice in the two or so months I have had it.

My investigation seemed to suggest that at the previous session of computer use the drive had not shut down when I shut my computer down.  hence on the next session it was still running (and was hot to suggest it had been running while computer was off).

My theory being that as it had not closed down properly, it was likely to be registering as busy upon the next windows start up.  thus being inaccessable, or unreadible.

The only thing I came up with, was to disconnect the power from the drive itself wait a bit and then reconnect it.

I would imagine this isnt exactly good for the drive, so other ideas or solutions welcomed.

kindest regards

Volly

[liliane]

Hi,

I have the same problem with my Seagate Free Agent Go FW 320GB and I am concerned about all the data stored in it during the past 4 years I've had it. Can you please help me? all my work is there and dont even care if I need to buy another HD or how much money I may need to spend as long as I recover all my Data.

Hope you guys have any suggestions, hope seagate can give an answer to what happened with my HD since today.

Thanks a lot,

Liliane.