SEAGATE 1TB JUST DIED.. HELP!

[mkohman]

Hello Guys,

This is so weird.. I will explain and would appreciate if any help or advise can be given please..

Basically, I woke up yesterday morning and switched my pc on.. at the startup of vista x64 BIT pc froze for the first time and I spent ages to figure out what the problem is..

The problem is that one of my 1tb Seagate SATA hard drives not detected in bios for some strange reason.. This is a bummer because I had approx 600GB of movie files on there..

I tried several things.. even re format and still not detecting the 1TB HDD.. When I connect to the motherboard it will freeze.. This is a HDD that has been working fine since I bought it 2 months ago with no problems..

I basically gave up after several hours and decided to send back to Seagate.. I will send back today if no advise or alternative option..

My PC is Brand New .. I purchased in October 2008.

DELL XPS 630
2 TB HDD (well 1TB Now ;))
8GB RAM VISTA 64BIT
2.66 QUAD CORE 12MB CACHE..

Thanks for all your help guys.. the only thing that pisses me off is all my movies have now gone.. well I guess.. any advise please???

Thanks.. ;)

[Shultz]

I would have swapped the working HD onto the cable of the non-working one to see whether its the motherboard gone or the drive?

How did you re-frormat it if the PC won't detect it??????

I had the HD go in my dell laptop lastweek, sometimes these things just fail......

Shelton.

[mkohman]

I would have swapped the working HD onto the cable of the non-working one to see whether its the motherboard gone or the drive?

How did you re-frormat it if the PC won't detect it??????

I had the HD go in my dell laptop lastweek, sometimes these things just fail......

Shelton.

Thanks for reply.. I already tried that.. I tried cable on working hdd and its fine.. I format my pc on my other hdd.. this hdd was not an OS hard drive it was a backup HDD.

[Shultz]

Thanks for reply.. I already tried that.. I tried cable on working hdd and its fine.. I format my pc on my other hdd.. this hdd was not an OS hard drive it was a backup HDD.

Ok, so it seems to look fine from the motherboard point of view, I do find it strange though that had the HD failed you then wouldn't be able to format it on another machine rather than it just not being seen on the dell machine??? Have you changed any hardware/software/bios settings in the past week?

If you connect both drives to the dell machine (reversing the good & "bad" ones on the cables & just try booting to the bios only does it then see both drives or just one? Have you tried connecting the "bad" one to a different power cable within the dell machine in case that power plug has failed???

Shelton.

[mkohman]

well to be honest with you .. I have tried all the above .. and no joy. I have not tried it in another machine but I don't see how that will work.. it is simply not been detected even in bios and if you let windows startup with the "bad" hdd connected then it won't even start up .. it will just freeze .. I have checked seagate and I have warranty till 2017 which is great and can easily send it for another drive.. I am just pissed off about the lost data on the drive..

[CaptainK]

OK, I don't understand how you managed to reformat the hard drive if it can't be detected.

I can only assume you tried to reformat but since it can't detect the drive, you can't even do that.

Assuming that you haven't managed to asucessfully reformat, you can remove the drive from the pc. Next, purchase a USB2.0 sata connnector cable that will allow you to plug your drive into a USB port after you pc has sucessfully booted up.

Cost is less than £15.

I'm an I.T. consultant and regularly use this method to rescue dead/damaged/non-booting drives for my clients for both laptops and desktop machines.

[mkohman]

OK, I don't understand how you managed to reformat the hard drive if it can't be detected.

I can only assume you tried to reformat but since it can't detect the drive, you can't even do that.

Assuming that you haven't managed to asucessfully reformat, you can remove the drive from the pc. Next, purchase a USB2.0 sata connnector cable that will allow you to plug your drive into a USB port after you pc has sucessfully booted up.

Cost is less than £15.

I'm an I.T. consultant and regularly use this method to rescue dead/damaged/non-booting drives for my clients for both laptops and desktop machines.

Thank you for your reply.. I don't think I am making my self clear here.. I did not format the "bad" HDD.. this has failed and not detectable in bios and will crash the system if trying to boot up windows with the hdd connected..

What I am saying is I format my PC as my OS is on another HDD and I tried to re connect to see if I can detect it but still no joy.. thats what I am saying ;)

However whats this cable you are talking about? Can you please send me a link to it. Also how would I power it up still from the power supplies power? will this work? I just want to be able to recover my data .. Thanks for help ...

[CaptainK]

Thank you for your reply.. I don't think I am making my self clear here.. I did not format the "bad" HDD.. this has failed and not detectable in bios and will crash the system if trying to boot up windows with the hdd connected..

What I am saying is I format my PC as my OS is on another HDD and I tried to re connect to see if I can detect it but still no joy.. thats what I am saying ;)

However whats this cable you are talking about? Can you please send me a link to it. Also how would I power it up still from the power supplies power? will this work? I just want to be able to recover my data .. Thanks for help ...

I had the same on an old NEC Dimension machine with an extra drive I had installed - worked fine for 3-4 years and one day, the pc won't boot with that extra drive, but is fine without.

OK, since your HDD has not been wiped, if the drive is at all salvageable, then try this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136214

Comes with power supply and all required cables.

I use one of these and it's very handy for rescuing stuff or even just backing up to an old archive HDD and putting the bare drive away in a shielded bag without the worry of enclosures, caddys, etc.

[mkohman]

CaptainK .. you are the man :) I am currently at work and have the seagate with me all boxed up ready to ship back but I am glad you gave me this advise.. I will purchase one of these and I hope I am able to get my movies back.. and then I will send the HDD back to seagate for a new one.. Thanks mate.. really appreciate this..

Has this worked for you? Also where do I get the power from? from the power supply or does it have an external power ? Thanks :)

[CaptainK]

Comes with power supply, connectors, etc (at least mine did). YOu can use it for IDE and SATA, 2.5" laptop and 3.5" desktop drives.

Used it for myself, my customers who have dropped their laptops and broken thier HDDs, etc.

Good luck.

[mkohman]

Comes with power supply, connectors, etc (at least mine did). YOu can use it for IDE and SATA, 2.5" laptop and 3.5" desktop drives.

Used it for myself, my customers who have dropped their laptops and broken thier HDDs, etc.

Good luck.

thanks alot mate.. top advise.. much obliged.. I will definitely try this and then send the HDD back I just hope my RMA is valid for a few days otherwise I will have to request for a new RMA I guess.. Thanks mate :)

[CaptainK]

No worries. :cool: Where do I send the invoice? ;)

[mkohman]

No worries. :cool: Where do I send the invoice? ;)

hahaha ;) let me see if it works out first .. thanks for the tip bro :)

[dexta]

Sorry to jump in after a possible solution is found (excellent by the way, I ordered myself one just now :) ) ... Have you ever thought about adding an additional 1tb drive to your setup (3tb total) then making the hdd's into a raid 1/5/6 setup so you don't have to worry about data loss if a drive fails? This setup makes the raid size a total of 2TB like you have now, but the extra drive makes the whole setup redundant so you lose nothing if a drive fails. Pop in a replacement and the raid rebuilds the data.

[mkohman]

Sorry to jump in after a possible solution is found (excellent by the way, I ordered myself one just now :) ) ... Have you ever thought about adding an additional 1tb drive to your setup (3tb total) then making the hdd's into a raid 1/5/6 setup so you don't have to worry about data loss if a drive fails? This setup makes the raid size a total of 2TB like you have now, but the extra drive makes the whole setup redundant so you lose nothing if a drive fails. Pop in a replacement and the raid rebuilds the data.

Thanks for the tip ;) I actually have 3 HDD 1 Samsung 640GB which came with the computer and 2 x 1TB Seagate 32mb cache HDD.. well 1 x 1TB now as the other has died on me ;)

When I get my new 1TB will I be able to do RAID? I don't really know how to configure it to RAID .. please can you advise .. also what are the benefits ? Thanks ;)

[gcobb]

I'm puzzled why Dell would sell that PC with 2 drives and not set them up as RAID. They usually do.

A bad HDD will cause your system to hang in the BIOS. If it isn't even being detected I'd not even worry with trying to recover anything from it since it won't spin.

Your operating system isn't even a factor when the BIOS won't read a drive. Reformatting didn't do much for you.

You set up RAID in your BIOS. Don't use Windows to do software RAID unless you have no other option.

[mkohman]

Guys, today I received my SATA to USB2.0 cable with power supply etc and tried it.. it will not automatically detect the HDD .. I have looked under computer management in VISTA but still not there? I can hear and feel the HDD spinning but Just can not acces it? Please help otherwise its going to be shipped back to seagate tomorrow morning..

Many Thanks...

[dexta]

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head you can do if it still won't recognize the drive with the usb cable..

Back to your question of raid, when you get your new drive yes you can raid them into a raid 0 configuration if you want. The only benefits are access speed, which you probably won't really be able to tell anyway.. and instead of having a d: and a e: drive, it will list both drives as one single 2tb drive. Only downside to doing a raid 0 with 2 drives is that if one crashes, you lose everything. I would do a raid 1 like i suggested earlier with an additional drive (3 total) to prevent data loss in the event of a crash again :) I hope that explains it a little more for you.

Oh, and like mentioned above, if your motherboard has raid functions, you can set that up in the BIOS, otherwise you would need a raid card which can be had pretty cheap. Last resort would be to set it up using windows!

[gcobb]

OP, Your drive has bad electronics. If it isn't being recognized under the system BIOS nothing else is going to recognize it. If there is business data on there that you just absolutely cannot do without, you can send the drive to Ontrack to have the data recovered. But it isn't cheap.

I would pass on doing a RAID 0. Your system board may allow for a 1. If it does, I'd be using that.

Using RAID 1 in Windows is mirroring your drives where if you lose one of them, you still have the other. Being that Windows controlls this, it is less reliable than hardware controlled.

RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across several disks in a way that gives improved speed and full capacity, but all data on all disks will be lost if any one disk fails.

RAID 1 (mirrored settings/disks) could be described as a real-time backup solution. Two (or more) disks each store exactly the same data, at the same time, and at all times. Data is not lost as long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array is simply the capacity of one disk. At any given instant, each disk in the array is simply identical to every other disk in the array.

Or you could just back up your data to the second hard drive.

[mkohman]

Thanks for all your input and advise guys ;)

[neil_g]

RAID 1 (mirrored settings/disks) could be described as a real-time backup solution. Two (or more) disks each store exactly the same data, at the same time, and at all times. Data is not lost as long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array is simply the capacity of one disk. At any given instant, each disk in the array is simply identical to every other disk in the array.

please please please dont rely on RAID as a backup solution. always have a 2nd backup to another medium/disk. if the controller fails and nukes your drives then youre screwed.

[CaptainK]

You can do RAID if your motherboard supports it. If not, you can buy a RAID card. As for setting up of a RAID Array, best bet is to do mirror or stripe with parity/double parity, i.e. RAID 1 or RAID 5/6.

Do not think about RAID 0 - disaster waiting to happen.

How to configure depends on motherboard or raid card.

Alternatively, buy a raid enclosure and pop your disks in there - that's the expensive but easy option....

Benefits are that you store some form of back up / disaster recovery data constantly. More info about pros and cons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

[mkohman]

Thanks for all your advise guys.. I will not be doing any RAID.. I am going to buy an externall usb Drive approx 500GB for £80.00 and backup my stuff on that.. I think thats the safest and possibly the best way.. ;)

[Shultz]

Thanks for all your advise guys.. I will not be doing any RAID.. I am going to buy an externall usb Drive approx 500GB for £80.00 and backup my stuff on that.. I think thats the safest and possibly the best way.. ;)

Did you see my link in Market watch? might save you a few move pennies for a 1TB drive.....

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=621247

Shelton.

[mkohman]

Did you see my link in Market watch? might save you a few move pennies for a 1TB drive.....

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=621247

Shelton.


Mate .. that is fantastic.. thanks for the heads up.. will buy one of these then :) but does this need an external power supply.. would really prefer the ones that work with usb 2 and are usb powered..

Have you got one already? Any good .. Thanks ;)

[Shultz]

This has a PSU with it, but it is a small one thats built into the plug if you see what I mean?

To get one that doesn't require a PSU will be one of the small "travel" ones that use 2.5" HD's..... I have been told that those with their own PSU are more stable during data transfers etc, whether that's true I'm not sure personally!

It is USB2.... I've only had it a couple of days, so too early to say how good/bad it is, but I'm loving the fact its just book sized & hides away nicely on my desk :)

Shelton.

[mkohman]

This has a PSU with it, but it is a small one thats built into the plug if you see what I mean?

To get one that doesn't require a PSU will be one of the small "travel" ones that use 2.5" HD's..... I have been told that those with their own PSU are more stable during data transfers etc, whether that's true I'm not sure personally!

It is USB2.... I've only had it a couple of days, so too early to say how good/bad it is, but I'm loving the fact its just book sized & hides away nicely on my desk :)

Shelton.

Thank you Shultz, I probably will buy one of these as they are reasonably cheap.. but what I wanted to ask is.. do you use it as a back up or general use everyday.. because what I wanted to do is use it to back up my pictures etc.. will I need to leave it on all the time or is it best to keep it of? does it have an on and off button on the device? thanks mate.. :)

[GregSteer]

I know it doesn't help you at all mkohman but the problem you've described is a current known fault with some 1.5TB (acknowledge by Seagate) and some 1TB Seagate drives (reported by users but can't recall the link atm). At least it should give you a heads up when talking to the supplier about sending it back.

Ref Links:
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15863
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-barracuda-1-5TB-freezing,6558.html
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/11/2125227

Regarding backups all of my data drives are RAID-1 mirrored, backed up nightly to a local 500Gb USB Hard Drive, and monthly to an off-site 500Gb drive thats at my parents house. Data is then in 3 (technically 4) places so the likely of major loss is minimal, at worst 1 months worth and since I'm not working commercially in photography atm thats fine for me, if I was then the offsite backup would be happening once a week.

[Damian75]

This is a more extreme solution than what has been offered but if all else fails you can try swapping the drives controller card with the one from your other Seagate 1tb be warned this may void your warranty but it has worked for me in the past when I needed to get data off a drive that was not seen at all.

[mkohman]

thanks for help guys.. Damian 75 I have thought of doing what you suggest but you need a special key like a star type of key to unscrew the board under the HDD.. I have sent it back anyway this morning at the post office spoecial delivery so I hope to receive a replacement next week sometime..
-
I will buy 1TB externall HDD and back up all my important stuff on that I think.. atleast that way I am safe in some way :)

[GregSteer]

This is a more extreme solution than what has been offered but if all else fails you can try swapping the drives controller card with the one from your other Seagate 1tb be warned this may void your warranty but it has worked for me in the past when I needed to get data off a drive that was not seen at all.

Specifically you need an identical board, with identical firmware, and this board will not be aware of any bad blocks on your current drive, this is a long shot option so beware.

Further Reading: http://www.harddrive-repair.com/pcb-repair.html

[johncolby]

please please please dont rely on RAID as a backup solution. always have a 2nd backup to another medium/disk. if the controller fails and nukes your drives then youre screwed.

+1 to this. You're also screwed if you accidentally delete a file, or something gets corrupted, or a virus strikes...everything is instantly mirrored to the second drive! RAID 1 is designed to prevent the system downtime associated with a drive failure, and not as a backup solution. Unless you're a business that demands zero downtime, forget RAID 1 and simply set up a real backup system with incremental backups (similar to the way Apple's Time Machine works).

[neil_g]

tbh i see no need for RAID in the personal use home environment.

edit - okay maybe to acheive an increased disk size by spanning. mirroring is what i meant.

[Shultz]

Thank you Shultz, I probably will buy one of these as they are reasonably cheap.. but what I wanted to ask is.. do you use it as a back up or general use everyday.. because what I wanted to do is use it to back up my pictures etc.. will I need to leave it on all the time or is it best to keep it of? does it have an on and off button on the device? thanks mate.. :)

Sorry, missed this......

Mine is mixed use, backups, storage etc.... These drives are automatic in that they turn on with the machine they are plugged into & again off when you power down, they also go to sleep if not accessed for 10 mins

Hope that helps!

Shelton.

[Damian75]

tbh i see no need for RAID in the personal use home environment.

edit - okay maybe to acheive an increased disk size by spanning. mirroring is what i meant.

I use a raid array for video editing in a striped array for much faster read right performance however this is only temporary storage for scratch disk and current working files cause if you loose one drive in a stripe your screwed.