Other External products

[hopeful]

to answer the question of how i opended it. i had to cut open the plastic with plyers.  it takes several hours and you need to be very careful that you dont damage the harddrive. then you can take most of the screws out. there are still long screws in it though. for those you need to apply pressure to the plastic parts that hold them in and itll break. its hard to do but if your handy with tolls you should be able to figure it out. i would be more specific if i could. im still amazed i was able to do it. also remeber the weakness of plastic is that if you bend it enough times itll snap. hope this helps. sorry for the delay in an answer.

[calebjsdad]

I am having the same issue with my Barracuda 7200.9 Ultra ATA/100 300-GB Hard Drive. It just sits and blinks. I have contacted the support group. We shall see what they say. I just want my stuff off this thing!

[Didrik]

   I'm willing to bet (something small) that at least some of the drives reported as dead, lost, corrupted, etc., in this thread are actually not.  I'm willing to make the correlative (tiny) bet that some troubleshooting techniques actually subsequently cause data loss.  Please read my postings in the last 10 days, plus this recent development.

   My external1.5TB  1T3 Turbo drive regularly loses connection to my workstation, proportional to how busy the workstation is, and how much of the systems resources are being used.  The connection is maintained at length (a previous posting reflected 17 hours of continuous reading without a hiccup -- thise increased to 23 hours) when the drive is being used. However, when it is quiescent for an hour or so, it gets to a state where nothing will connect to it, where nothing I do will tickle it into action, and where -- at best -- the cached root-level directories and the next level of directories downward are visible, and on rare occasions the actual filenames and their properties -- but that's it.

   After doing an extensive antivirus scan and antispyware scan on this 1.5TB volume (nothing bad found!) this morning, an hour later, the workstation couldn't find the drive. No ON or OFFs, or connections or disconnections or restarts were done.

   A technique which has now worked multiple times after losing the drive for hours on end and into days on end -- and described elsewhere in this Forum -- with a twist, is to disconnect the drive's USB 2.0 cable at the drive, turn OFF the drive, wait a minite or so. Then either turn ON the drive and wait for the blinking buttonlight to stop and then plug in the USB cable to the drive. A double-"dink-donk" formthe workstation is heard, and the drive light blinks back and forth, and the drive mounts about 2 - 3 minutes later.  Everything's there.

   As previously reported, installing the Active-X controls for certain websites, STILL does bring back the drive when it disappears.  This is a heck of a mystery to me, however I'm supposing the installation somehow resets the system bus, USB bus, or clears out some sort of stalled firmware or software.

   If my theory has any merit, then another failed drive, not yet returned may be brought back to life.  Will update later or tomorrow.  Meantime data recovery is still my main mission here, and I've only got 520GB to go!

[calebjsdad]

Success!!!!!!!!! Wow what a relief! I was able to pull the hard drive from it's external case and put it into an old computer and retrieve every piece of data on it. With no corrupt files or anything.

 I am now under the assumption that it was purely the case and or its power supply causing my turmoil. I emptied the hard drive and check it for errors, reformated it.. It is working just fine. Just threw the old external case and power suppy in the trash. Maybe, I will try to get a different external case later and try again. Good luck with your recoveries. Tadd

[Didrik]

Calebjsdad,

     Your experience is quite helpful.  A stethoscope on the enclosures reveals a very different sound patterns for the startup sequence of failed drives vs. good drives, so I was inclined toward controller or cache failure on the drive itself.  However, it very well might be the enclosure, as in the case you describe. 

    Next, we need to try to determine whether it's typical of the drive failures others have reported.

    (1) Did the symptoms of your drive situation include the hard drive settling into an unending, arhythmic, "clicking"  routine?

    (2) What were the OneTouch button lights doing?

    The failed drive I'm returning, for example, has the lefthand button light regularly blinking at 0.69sec interval, after the LH and RH alternately blink as the drives spin up (about 30 seconds).  The drive head actuator has no discernible rhythm to its "clicking" (like it sometimes does during disk thrashing).

   While the drives do not report out as S.M.A.R.T drives, I suspect that they actually are, but that the interface in the enclosure is not passing the S.M.A.R.T. info through to diagnostic software.  Such info would help determine what went wrong with the drive, including recoverable read & write failure rate, threshhold, temperature, max G-force, and a a couple dozen other parameters.  I suspect that the drives are statistically OK, as you may, and that the enclosure is the cheapest thing known to mankind.

   (3) Now that you have the drive in a different case, do you have any software that can report the S.M.A.R.T. specs?  Stellar Software's Stellar SMART "early drive warning software" can report the info.

[macfrick]

My drive will not mount and the light pulsates. I am a MAC user.

[MacGirlee]

We have the same blinking light problem with our 1.5TB One Touch III. It just sits there and blinks, computer can't see it. This is after it decided to take one of the partitions and change the format to RAW. I'm hopeful to find an answer as to how to recover that partition as that is where all of my work files are located.

This is our second drive (warranty replacement from SG). The first one did the clicking and was not visible. This drive sits on a desk as the backup to our home computer server. It's even plugged into a battery backup.

We replaced the power cord and had no luck.

Seagate, I think you have a problem with these drives. I expect better. I'll contact customer service, but I suspect my replacement is out of warranty at this point. My data could probably be recovered, but unless you'll do it for free, I'm not giving you the business since your problematic product line is responsible for the problem. 

[pfflyers]

I have a Maxtor One Touch III 160GB it worked before but now won't power up. When I turn the power button on the front light doesn't come on but the solid green light on the power supply goes into blink mode. Is it possible to replace the external power supply to resolve the problem. I had a problem with 2 g-raid drives in my office and I sent them back to the manufacturer and they replaced the power supplies for free I suspect they found out that the original power supplies where a manufacture defect. All of my files where still there after the power supply was replaced. It seems that Seagate should consider at least replacing power supplies unless it is related to the power connection in the case.

[Mugenkira111]

i have the same problem execpt it appears in my computer as "Local Disk L" rather than "Bryce" and when i click on it it says i need to reformat my hard drive deleting all the data i need, plz help is there any way i can get the data off my harddrive i really dont want to delete  400gigs of pics and vids

[glennhd]

Just in case this is useful to anyone:

I had the same problem many have reported here and in other threads. Quick background: My Maxtor OneTouch III 500GB drive worked for almost 2 years, for backups on a Dell running XP Pro SP3.  Recently, when I turn it on, it's extremely noisy at first -- sounds like the fan's running against something, or just way too fast.  I mean scary loud for 30-120 seconds, then quiets down to normal.  (Not a "clicking" sound like some have described here. More of a whir.) So I've barely ever turned it off lately.

However, sometimes it goes into "Power saving Mode" (with the single blinking blue light,) and I can't wake it up or access it without powering it off and on.  It's not set to ever go into that mode, via Maxtor settings or Windows (it's connected via FireWire). It just does.

Yesterday it stopped working altogether.

When I turn it on, it instantly and silently goes into "Power saving Mode" (blinking blue light), and won't come out. Totally unrecognized by the computer, even in Device Manager. Computer has no idea anything's even attached. Tried Firewire and USB connection. On two computers.  Nothing.

I tried Seagate's entire Troubleshooting walk-through. Didn't help at all.

Some on this board, even a Moderator, have said this situation means the drive is dead, and that if you want to try to recover data you need to send it back to Seagate, which can be extremely expensive. BAD ADVICE -- or at least, quite premature. Instead, I followed other people's advice and tried a different Maxtor power supply which I happened to have for another (OneTouch II) drive.

FIXED!

This power supply switch fix, which seems to work for a lot of people, really ought to be suggested in the Troubleshooting Guide, and the Mods on this forum really ought to suggest it as well. That'd be a great help. Else, it sounds an awful lot (though surely unintentionally) like Seagate is hoping people will pay them over a thousand dollars on needless "data recovery" for drives out of warranty, when all that may be needed is a new power supply.

BTW, the LED light on my now-faulty power supply always lighted as normal. No blinking or dimming even when tested.

QUESTION: Where do I get a new power supply that will work with the OneTouch III?  I still need the good one I have for my OneTouch II drive.  Thanks!