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Dropped My External Hard Drive, Won't Work

12K views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  ferrija1 
#1 ·
Not long ago, I bought a Seagate FreeAgent 500GB external hard drive. It was working just fine until I accidently knocked it over. When it fell it bumped the leg of a table pretty hard. Immediately after that, I started getting popup balloons on the taskbar saying 'write error' or something similar. Then I tried to doubleclick on the drive in My Computer and it froze up. So then I unplugged and replugged and it said 'USB Device Not Recognized.' Those error messagesn were the last I heard from it. Then I restarted, and after that, the drive would not display in My Computer at all, would not even react to the computer at all. I tried it on two computers. Still, nothing. I noticed a strange sound coming from the hard drive. It's a sort of melodic buzzing with a beeping sound every few seconds. Sometimes it goes completely silent. So what I need to know is:

- What can I do, can I fix it myself?
- If not, how much can I expect to pay to get my data recovered? At the very least, I need a listing of the files that were on the hard drive, just so I know exactly what I'm missing. I might be able to replace them myself if I know exactly everything that's on it.
- Is the hard drive fixable? If not, will the warranty cover replacement?
- Also, I called around a few places and the most reasonable one said it would cost around $100 to fix it. Is this worth it?

Thanks in advance.
 
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#2 ·
I'd be very interested to know how "someone" was going to fix it - and all for a measly $100.00. If the machine won't even recognise it as a USB device then the drive (or external case) electronics are probably damaged. The read/write errors you got indicate that the actual drive platters have physical damage. If you can separate the drive from the case you *might* be able to slave the drive to your system and at least attempt to get the data off. From your description, tho', it does sound like it's damaged beyond repair.

As for data recovery - yes, there are places that specialise in this field (and that have the right equipment and "clean" labs) but they will charge you heaps (and I mean $1000's) to salvage as much as they can from the drive. If your data is THAT valuable to you then you may decide to go down that path. Otherwise, time to buy a new one and learn how to make backups.

Warranty service?? Very unlikely as the service people would be able to quickly assess the damage as being caused by misuse (yes - I know you didn't mean to drop it but that's how they will see it) and deny any liability.
 
#3 ·
Hello, I pass for the same situation with my freeagent 320 GB, don't work. The message is:
"USB Device Not Recognized" and then the device turn off the light.

I would like to know if someone find the solution for this problem. I bought the device two weeks ago, I want my data back.
 
#4 ·
You could try something like SpinRite to recover it, but if it is making any grinding noises don't use it at all. You can't recover the data yourself (unless with software) and it is not fixable. You're only hope is to send it to data recovery pros who will actually take the platters out in a clean room and put them in another drive.

kev1592 said:
If you can separate the drive from the case you *might* be able to slave the drive to your system and at least attempt to get the data off. From your description, tho', it does sound like it's damaged beyond repair.
There's no way you can do that, unfortunately.
 
#6 ·
When you drop a hard disk, typically it does mechanical damage.

The first thing to try is to remove the drive from the external enclosure and connect it directly to a desktop as a secondary drive. If it fails there, I don't give you much chance for recovery, regardless of how much you spend.
 
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