External Hard Drive not recognized

[onelove]

As the title suggest my external Seagate hard drive is no longer being recognized by my system. The information on this is absolutely critical to me- I am a DJ and Producer and this particular drive contains all of my song stems, acapellas, instrumentals, sample kits, and also backups of every program I use (as well as my OS backup).

I just recently moved into a new apartment and my drive worked fine before the move 2 days ago. I do not think I bumped it or damaged it (seeing as how I always put them in safe places on the go) and it is now no longer working.

Here is what I can tell you so far:

The device has been connected to 4 usb ports and works on none.

The device has been connected to my secondary OS (watered down live
performance side) on my cpu- a whole different OS but same hardware.

The device has been connected to a 2nd computer

My other 2 drives in addition to all of my DJ usb equipment work well.

All devices have been power cycled, rebooted, etc etc

The device is recognized under Disk Manager as "disk 1" and when I try to change properties I cannot. I try to "initiialize" the drive and get "data error- cyclic redundancy check"

There is no famous "clicking noise"

I have taken apart the case and cleaned the contacts on the HD's board with an eraser (to no avail).

The device has been connected to a powered Multi-TT usb hub and does not work (though my other HD's do). Note: I notice that under normal circumstances a green "power" light is lit when a device is connected to the hub. This light turns on for my other HD's but NOT for this one.

That is the most detailed description I can give at the moment. The device is not recognized right away as a USB Mass storage device- it takes a little while for the system to recognize it. This worked quite literally 2 days ago and does not work now (with no system changes).

I need this to work badly (or at least be able to extract the info to another drive).

Edit: Now correctly reflects circumstances

 

[essenbe]

Have you plugged the device into a USB port and not the hub? Also, check disk management again, look at the bottom portion of the page and see if it is there. It may have just lost its drive letter.

 

[onelove]

"It was connected to all 4 usb ports" - yes
I have also since connected it to a friends computer (did not work)

It is recognized by drive manager but it takes a while. It is labelled "disk 1" and I cannot edit any properties. I click "initialize" and get the entry "data error- cyclic redundancy check"

It does not make the famed "clicking sound". I have tried cleaning the contacts on the board with an eraser as well (to no avail).

 

[essenbe]

I think you should go to Seagate's web site and download their diagnostic program, Seatools. Run the diagnostics and see if the drive is functioning properly.

 

[onelove]

Doing so now- will edit post when it gives a diagnostic.

 

[onelove]

The smart test was unavailable and it failed the short generic.

I have started the "long generic" test which claims it can repair bad sectors. It found 1 error right off the bat- so maybe this will work. I'm more interested in saving the information than the drive- unfortunately a lot of it is "hard to find" or "paid for" stems to songs that are a bit "exclusive".

I'm thinking this might make some data corrupt but hopefully not all. We'll see I suppose- thanks for the help mate.

I tried to throw in my 2 cents on some local posts to give something back

 

[essenbe]

Stick around, this is a great place -to learn and help others. What type of Seagate external do you have? Is it still under warranty?

 

[onelove]

To be honest I have no idea. It's probably 1.5-2 yrs old by now. I googled the id number and here it is:

http://www.externalharddrives.org.u...agate-expansion-500gb-external-hard-drive.jpg

seagate 9sd2a4-500

It's far from warranty either way I would think (especially since I cracked open the casing to clean the contacts LOL)

bah! My drive just failed the long generic test (which means that it couldn't resolve the problem).


​

 

[onelove]

Do you happen to know of any good drive recovery programs that KEEP filenames the same instead of dumping them alphanumerically?

The problem I'm facing is dealing with having so many .wav and .mp3 files. If it just dumps them all out I'll never be able to find the ass-end of anything with so many song pieces floating around.

 

[essenbe]

OK, let me think and see if we can get at least some data off of it for you.

 

[essenbe]

At this point, I think you will be doing good to just get the data off of the drive. Apparently the drive still spins. If you have an installation disk, see if you can do this, but you will need another drive to store the info that you get off. Read this tutorial, copy and paste from the recovery console.

 

[onelove]

blah, I'll have to re-dl my windows 7 iso file from drexel's site to do this (the only copy I had was on this drive haha). I can access that screen easily by using my second partition.. I have extra space available on a separate 1 tb HD so that's not an issue.

I will give it a try and post my results tomorrow.

Thanks again!

 

[essenbe]

Good luck and I hope it works for you. If not, I'll try to think of something else. Also, you are not going to actually install windows, you can borrow a disk from someone to try this, any windows 7 disk will do.