FreeAgent Products

[Cantbecanit]

Ok, I'm writing this one up to give you all some insight of how this little drive works and what to try if it starts to play up.

Common problem it doesn't show up

These are the things to try first

Check your USB cable that came with the drive, it should have no twists or kinks in it, check the ends aren't deformed as well

Next try different USB ports, these do wear out and stop the com between the two devices

Ok it's still not working!

Are the lights flashing, rapidly means there is a problem, gentle pulse means it is working and it's probably a Windows thing where you need to go into disk management (right click my computer) then if it's there it will probably be offline and needs to be given a drive letter

Still no joy, no lights at all means no power so try another mini USB lead with it, still no joy?

Breakout time *(IF YOU FOLLOW THIS IT'S AT YOUR OWN RISK AND WILL INVALIDATE YOUR WARRANTY)*

Peel back the top tin cover, it's only glued together and starting at the curved end is easiest,

Once open you will see the drive and bridge board, lift the drive at the non bridge end and slide it out, don't worry if it comes complete with the board, seperate it from the alloy sleeve by undoing the four screws found under the white caps, then pull the drive from the board, now plug the drive into a PC as you would a normal drive, this can be psu and sata lead or a docking station if you have one, if the drive doesn't spin and show it's dead and there nothing more to do other than replace it with another 2.5 drive if you want to retain the use of the bridge board so Seagate manager and encryption can be used still ( unconfirmed that another drive will work but I'm almost certain it will)

The results of this is that if the drive worked once removed then the bridge board has died, if not it's the drive itself or a combo of both.

One other thing that does catch people is when swapping between PC and Mac and between XP and Vista/7, the easiest way to sort this if it should happen is to re-format, if the option to doesn't show you can use Gparted to reset file tables to the desired format.

Hope this helps point you the right way.

Thx for the nudge Leafy, I had forgot to mention it. :->

[AskTheLeaf]

Thank you very much, Cantbecanit, for posting this info   . Just one thing I want to add - if you decide to open the hard drive enclosure, please get in touch with our warranty department first, otherwise you might lose a valid warranty.

[JanCole]

HI,

My seagate won't work - the Mac says it can't read it and it needs initislizing and my Windows laptops say it needs formatting.

I don't want to lose what I laready have on it.

You mention that it could be caused by using it on Mac and PC - which is what may have happened.

Is there anyway I can save the data on it before I format it - or recover the data?

[Cantbecanit]

http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

HTH.

[ck97]

Hello,
You mentioned in this posting that if the light on the unit flashes rapidly that there is a problem. What types of problems could it indicate?
Thank you

[Shells]

Hi cantbecanit. My Freeagent 750GB bought in 2009 is not recognised any more, does not light up, and makes no sounds at all.  It is dead (last working about 2 weeks ago AFAIK).  Obviously I've tried different USB slots, different cables, but no joy.

It is under warranty and I can send it back but get none of the data off it according to the warranty site.

Do you know what the chances are of extracting the disk and getting the data off?  Is it a 50/50 chance the disk is broken or is it more like 80% chance it's the controller in this case (no noise, no crash, it just stopped working).

Not sure I can be bothered sending it back to Seagate just to get a new, blank one back worth around £60 (I presume) that I have to go to the post office to collect in however many weeks, but having zero chance of getting my precious data off it (honestly, you would think they would at least try to get the data off these, when we've been relying on it to store our data safely for years and then it just dies on us!)

Am I better off opening it up and trying to get the data off and buying a different brand, in your opinion?

I'm probably more bothered about the data rather than the replacement, as I can get another brand off Amazon for about £70 anyway.  I would appreciate your opinion on my particular circumstances. Thanks.

[Shells]

Just to close this off;

I took my Freeagent drive casing apart.  Just popped it open and removed all screws I came across.

Took about 3 minutes.

Then I ordered a Sumvision SATA HDD Docking station from Amazon for £17.99 delivered. (This has the advantage of taking 3.5 AND 2.5 drives, plus XD, SD/MMC and CF cards - Bargain!).

That took a few days to arrive.

Plugged in my 750GB Hard drive and Hey Presto, I can access the drive.

I conclude from this that it was not a HDD fault, but something to do with the casing or power supply board.

If this happens to you, just bust the casing apart, undo all the screws and hopefully your drive will still be working like mine is.

[totiescone]

hi cantbecanit, im having an issue with my seagate freeagent desk 1TB and i wonder if you can help me. the drive worked fine 2 days ago , i have about 200gb or so of data on it. i lent it to someone for a hour so they could copy some stuff and when its come back, it says all the data is there but windows vista cant access it , says the folder is empty. it gets a drive letter designated L: and seems fine but will not open. i also run ubuntu 12.04 and its always worked fine on there too, but now when i boot up ubuntu it auto mounts the drive, lets me open it to see the data there, but as soon as i try to open a file, (any file) it will play for 18 seconds then the whole pc will freeze until i disconnect the drive. also i cannot now copy to or from the drive and the pc freezes up. i have also tried formatting the drive, to no avail. it wont let me. about a year ago i think i got a virus as i watched the drive delete everything on itself in front of my eyes , then say that it would need formatted to work again. i duly formatted the drive and everything worked fine until now. the only thing being that when i formatted the drive i lost the seagate software and never replaced it as it was working . i dont know if it would help my issue by having the seagate software, is it possible to get it again or is there any other way to fix this that you or anyone else might know?any help would be much appreciated as i really need this drive to work again

[totiescone]

in reference to my last query i have tried other cables and usb ports on my pc, there is only one light as far as i can see on the drive itself, a white one which kind of gently pulses. it still lights up , i can hear it start to spin but nothing else apart from what ive already said. could this possibly be because i dual boot and it was removed normally from my pc running ubuntu and plugged into a windows 7 machine? the last time it went and i had to format it was also after it had been plugged into a different wndows 7 machine

[totiescone]

 so i went through the troubleshooter , disk management found it, said it was healthy, black bar etc, and as it requested i changed the drive letter, it said i had to restart the pc , which i did and now it says usb device not recognised, its not in disk management at all any more, even when i downloaded the seagate manager it now says i have no seagate devices attached. about ready for tearing my hair out here, i fear ive made it worse