FreeAgent Products

[James0060]

Ok my problem with my Seagate Freeagent Desk (Grey) external hardrive is it isn't wanting to work anymore!  It worked fine for a while and then about a month ago it just wouldn't show up on my computer.  The light is on and makes the sound of connecting, it even gives me the option to safely remove the hardware.  And my problem is different I have tried many solutions but none have worked it just turns on and ONLY SHOWS UP ON THE DEVICE MANAGER (under disk drives) and not the disk management.  So my question is what can I do to access my files and not lose everything or am I just screwed?  Thanks in advance!

[silence711]

When you see the drive listed in device manager under disk drives, right click on it and select the volumes tab at the top...select populate.

Does it provide any drive information or does it give you an error message? If there's a message, what is it?

Try another comp and try switching the cables as well. 

Lemme know what happens and we'll see what else we can find out for ya...

[AgenDavid]

I'm experiencing the same issue.  My Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB usb/eSata/1394 ext drive has worked great until now.
I connect it via firewire or USB,  I hear an audible tone from PC indicating it has been recognized...but I can't access it.
I open MY COMPUTER...and it isn't there.   I go into DEVICE MGR and it shows up and click on PROPERTIES and the status shows it's working properly.  

I can "SAFELY REMOVE" the drive ...I click on the icon and it shows up in the SAFELY REMOVE FREEAGENT.

I've checked cables...tried it on 3 different PC's with Vista, XP, W7.... it was working fine on all these before as I could save & move files without a problem.  

I'm getting FORMAT DRIVE requests...which I don't do because the drive is an archive
I'm getting WINDOWS can't access drive because it is being used by another operation,  close operation. msg.
(can't see what operation is running because all I'm doing is trying view the drive,  not running anything else.)

I'm getting data cyclic msg when I attempt to view drive in DEVICE MGR.

I see a green status bar as the drive seems to AUTO-PLAY... then crashes.

This is quite frustrating as I have archived files that I need to get to.
Any help would be much appreciated.

[kenji57]

Does it how up in Disk Management?

Device Manager properties only shows the USB - SATA interface is working properly, it doesn't mean the drive is OK.

It sounds like there is a data corruption problem.The simplest option is to wipe the partition, reformat and start again.

If you don't want to do that you could try rebuilding the partition table using Test Disk

ps I'm not really sure what you mean by "archived files" unless it just means "files saved on an external drive", but as silence711 says, if you only have them saved in one place then you don't have a backup. If your fies are important, keep a backup.

[James0060]

Yes I have tried connecting it to another computer and it didn't work I even tried a different cable to see if some how that was the porblem, but it wasn't.  When I go to device manager, disk manager, seagate, volumes it reads

Disk: Disk 1

Type: Unknown

Status: Not Initialized

Partition style: Not Applicable

Capacity: 3950 MB

Unallocated space: 0 MB

Reserved space: 0 MB

[kenji57]

Ok, the partition table is corrupted. You might be able to access the files Using a Linux Live CD or repair the partition table using TestDisk 

[fzabkar]

The 4GB capacity could be a symptom of an internal fault in the HDD. Could you tell us how HD Sentinel identifies the drive, in particular its capacity, model number, and firmware version?