Help with external hard drive please!

bricky06

First off - I did a quick search to see if there was an existing thread which might help and I found one which was similar but it was unresolved and not quite my issue anyway.

I have a Seagate external desktop hard drive which was running fine up until a few days ago but now I cannot view the files on it.

There does not seem to be any problem with the power supply (light comes on although is flashing green rather than solid, sounds of disk spinning)

In 'Computer' the drives shows up as 'Local Disk (H: )' but when highlighted the green progress bar at the top of the window makes it about 95% of the way and then stops.

Is the hard drive just dead altogether or is there any way I can retrieve my files?
I'm planning on buying a portable 1TB samsung soon anyway so the hard drive itself isn't my worry - just the files.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Edit: removed accidental smiley face.

yoyo

This can happen if the drive gets corrupted by not being ejected correctly. You can try using TestDisk on it and also PhotoREC to recover files off it. With the files recovered if possible format it from within Disk Management (Right Click Computer in Start Menu>Manage), this will wipe data so run run TestDisk and PhotoREC first, in that order

Nick

Marinjohn

bricky06 wrote: »

First off - I did a quick search to see if there was an existing thread which might help and I found one which was similar but it was unresolved and not quite my issue anyway.

I have a Seagate external desktop hard drive which was running fine up until a few days ago but now I cannot view the files on it.

There does not seem to be any problem with the power supply (light comes on although is flashing green rather than solid, sounds of disk spinning)

In 'Computer' the drives shows up as 'Local Disk (H:)' but when highlighted the green progress bar at the top of the window makes it about 95% of the way and then stops.

Is the hard drive just dead altogether or is there any way I can retrieve my files?
I'm planning on buying a portable 1TB samsung soon anyway so the hard drive itself isn't my worry - just the files.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Have a go at this...http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools
It should tell you if your drive is good or not..

bricky06

I should have said, I tried Seatools but the initial 'Searching for drives. Please wait...' was just staying on the screen.

Thanks for your replies, I will try one of those other programmes and hope for the best.

yoyo

bricky06 wrote: »

I should have said, I tried Seatools but the initial 'Searching for drives. Please wait...' was just staying on the screen.

Thanks for your replies, I will try one of those other programmes and hope for the best.

Try TestDisk on it, this should help reconstruct a corrupted partition. The fact Windows sees the drive and not Seatools is a bit odd, I think Seatools is more for internal than external drives, although I'm open to correction with that

Nick

bricky06

I tried testdisk and photo rec on it now but again I get a 'Disk identification, please wait...' and it seems to just stay that way?

any other ideas?

yoyo

bricky06 wrote: »

I tried testdisk and photo rec on it now but again I get a 'Disk identification, please wait...' and it seems to just stay that way?

any other ideas?

It may take a minute or 2, if longer there could be problems with the drive. You could try removing the drive from its enclosure and putting it in internally, its just a SATA HD in a casing. If its the enclosure thats the issue this will let you grab the data off it,

Nick

bricky06

No, I let it run for 10/15 min and still nothing, looks like it's curtains for this fella.


Thanks anyway.