Other External products

[zendog13]

I have a new 2TB Maxtor One Touch III that I have used maybe a total of 10 hours along with my Macbook Pro.   The plan was to use the Maxtor as our media file center, so we put ALL of our music (still backed up, thank God) and our movies (NOT backed up) onto this drive.  We were planning on buying a Mac mini to operate w/ our TV & sound system.

We used the drive maybe 3 times (after loading all the media on it) and then recently when I connected it, it started making a "whirr-click" noise repeatedly before whirring down to a hum.  It did not mount then and has since failed to mount.  It's still under warranty, but I want these movies.

Disk Utility fails to recognize (as well as Data Rescue), so have we completely lost these movies?  The data recovery service promoted by Seagate gave me a quote of between $1700-$2900 to recover.  Yeah, right.

So, has anyone else encountered such problems?

And does anyone have any data recovery suggestions?

A million thanks!

[minx329]

Put it in the fridge, maybe overnight (I'm not crazy, saved 2 Lacies like this).  Take it out, give it a lil bit to reacclimate to room temp, say 10 minutes, then plug it up.  From Device Manager, scan for plug and play devices a couple of times; or restart computer.  Whirr-click indicates something wrong with the disk platters but life is still better than the eerie silence being exhibited by my One Touch Plus.

[loveboxer]

I have the same drive, for the same short amount of time , loaded with very important data. And the same problem with a clicking noise!  

Will try the Fridge as a last ditch effort..

Are these drives defective?  

I bought 2 , one for back up, the first drive did not last long enough for me to make a back up, talk about bad luck! 

[gbohlken]

Yup. I got 3 weeks use out of my 2TB Maxtor One Touch III before the clicking noise. Maxtor says I can send it back under warranty -- but explicitly states that I will not get my data back, and Maxtor states that they can't guarantee what will happen with my data.

So, my two choices:

1) send the drive off for warranty service and give 2TB of my music/movies/family pictures to some tech guys to do what they want while Maxtor sends me a crappy refurbed drive that already did the same thing to someone else

OR

2) say goodbye to more $$$, open the case, void the warranty, and see if I can stick in some other drives into this case. That sure is one expensive FW800/USB external case, when I still have to go pay for the new drives to put in it.

2 hours after I wrote the above...

I did it. I voided my warranty, opened the case, and took a look inside. (If I ultimately get anywhere, I'll post pics, instructions, etc., so other adventurous souls don't crack the plastic case.)

Here's the most interesting thing: the internal is 2 separate 1-gig Seagate Barracuda ST31000340AS e-sata drives. A quick google of that model#, and look what I found from just 3 months ago:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/374/1050374/seagate-barracudas-7200-11-failing

I've determined which of my 2 internal drives is making the click of death sound. Debating picking up some cheap eSata drives and plugging them into this enclosure to see what happens. Anyone know if the Barracuda and the Maxtor OneTouch have any proprietary firmware that would block the case from working with, say, a Western Digital drive inserted???

Here all along I thought most folks liked the Seagate brand but that the Maxtor products were having the problems. I know they're both owned by Seagate. But looks like Maxtor's good quality is rubbing off on the Seagate Barracuda, making the Barracuda a perfect choice to get put in a case with the Maxtor OneTouch label.

Message Edited by gbohlken on 04-11-2009 01:15 PM

Message Edited by gbohlken on 04-11-2009 01:16 PM

[Edited in compliance of the community rules and regulations.]

Message Edited by BradC on 04-11-2009 11:13 PM

[minx329]

I just wanted to add a quick update.  What led me to the forums was my own problem with an unresponsive One Touch 4 Plus (1 Tera).  Used my own fridge trick and sadly no fun ding dink from XP upon connection. not one to be defeated I swore I would void the warranty come weekend and left it connected not having time to deal with it.  Saturday morning, sad down and prepared to open the case when lo and behold what's that I feel...Life!

Lesson here: Threaten the drive prior to voiding the warranty and perhaps it will be scared of enough to start whirring (with no click).

Best of luck to you all, remember patience is key because no matter what's on the drive, it's important to us all

Note: but now i'm afraid to reboot my computer in case it can't find it again.  <still sad>

[coltmccoyisbomb]

minx,

you probably know this but if i were you id be backing up my data IMMEDIATELY

[Robert Sorensen]

I have a "similar" experience with my Maxtor One Touch III drive. Also a 2TB drive that I use as an external drive with my iMac 24".

After few weeks I couldn't access any data on the drive. The drive mount properly on my desktop. I can see it in Disk Utility and Disk Utility is able to determine the amount of space used as well as number of files and folders.

However - when ever I try to access the drive - nothing happens. If I use Finder to access the drive Finder basically becomes unresponsive (shows up as Application doesn't Respond). At this stage I can't do anything (including unmounting the drive). My only option at this time is to power off my Maxtor Drive. Finder starts working again but I do get the message of improper Drive removal. 

If I use Disk Utility to repair the disk I get an error message saying that Disk Utility can't unmount the drive.

As mentioned - the drive mount's OK every time I power it up. I can hear the drive spin up (sounds OK) but after this the drive doesn't appear to be spinning at all anymore (like when I access it with Disk Utility or Finder or Disk Warrior or anything)

I've tried Seatools on Windows - same story - it can't do anything. 

The ironi is that I bought this Maxtor drive after having problems with another external drive that had the 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda drive. That drive "froze" when I tried to access certain files (and it appear to me, that it was files of a particular size in the range of 50-60 MB)

After I managed to move all my files from the 1.5TB Seagate Drive to the Maxtor drive (an iPhoto Library, an Aperture Library and movie files for iMovie) I sent the drive back. At that time I've learned about Seagate's Barracuda drive and swore not to ever again buy Seagate.

Back to the Maxtor drive. After trying pretty much everything I open up the enclosure and learned that inside were 2 Seagate 1TB Barracuda drives! Not Maxtor which I had assumed.

Of course I contacted Seagate's technical support several times, but I find them pretty useless and incompetent.

But the story doesn't end here! At the same time that I experience problems with the 1.5TB Barracuda drive my Time Machine drive started to sound weird and it didn't mount. The drive had clearly died! I returned the drive to Seagate as it was under warranty. That too was a Barracuda drive! Seagate did return me another drive; another Seagate Barracuda drive, but a drive that didn't work! 

I'm pretty convinced, that my Maxtor drive (Seagate Barracuda drives)  suffers the BUSY problem that has been widely reported on the internet. I believe everything match that diagnosis, but I haven't figured out any way to get it out of that mode.

Any advise and help is obviously appreciated.

Thanks

[silversimple]

I am having the exact same problem with my Maxtor 2TB drive.  The drive worked fine for 6 months and now I can't open any of my movie projects (imovie HD) or quicktime files.  I can't copy the files to my computer (macbook pro with Leopard) because of the "busy" issue.  I can't run disk repair from disk utility.  I emailed seagate tech support and the only suggestion I got was to unplug everything, power down, and start up again.   Of course this did nothing.  

Does anyone know of any solutions?  Has anyone had any success with sending a hard drive back and receiving a new one?   

[marcolopes]

Same here with my OneTouchIII 320GB. The drive has a few years. All data lost.

Clicking soung. Tipically a head problem.

Tried everything, except OPEN it and the "fridge" trick.

Now i have 4 external WD drives. No more External Maxtor... :-\

[MrButkus]

You do realize a bad power supply can do things.  If not enough amperage (not voltage), you may not be able to spin up.  Hence opening it up and placing into a PC or different case with, guess what, a new power supply.

Oh yes... ALWAYS two copies of important data.