Hello there. I'm new to all this so bare with me. I've only had this external hard drive for a couple of years, and I am not so tech savvy so I'll try to as descriptive and detailed as possible. The portable hard drive just out of the blue stopped working.
Never dropped
no loud odd noises
Brand: Verbatim-Seagate 500gb usb.
I took the device apart and hooked it up direct to the tower itself. That was the only way the computer was able to even recognize it at all. And that was just some of these recovery programs and bios. I've ran chkdsk, bios says theres 0 memory on the device (at least bios recognized it).I've tried getting the latest drivers, that didn't help.. I'm at a loss here as to what to do now. I even attempted to format the thing, but it wouldn't even let me do that. It fails every time. Thinking I would just retrieve the information that was on it after. I could at least regain access to the drive again. But that didn't work either or that was my thought process. Is the drive completely just junk or is there a function I'm missing in the program here? Because the drive isn't showing up or recovering anything in the program that I see..?
Hello Snake and welcome to the forum. If you are trying to retrieve information from the drive, do not format it! Have you tried either Verbatim's or Seagate's support websites for help? Some sites are pretty good when it comes to diagnosing hardware/firmware/driver problems, you may find something you have overlooked.
Does Windows recognize the drive with the same drive letter it has used all along, or did that change when you removed the drive from it's housing and connected it directly? What was previously recognized as a USB device is now a SATA device, and Windows may have gotten confused and assigned a new drive letter, or no drive letter at all. This could lead to problems as far as recognizing the partitions and accessing the data on the drive. From what I understand, Recuva needs a drive letter to recognize a drive or partition.
Finally, you may have to accept the fact that the drive has died. Sometimes they will give you a sign that there are problems, and other times they just fail without warning. Years ago, I had a CD-ROM drive that was fine one minute, and dead the next time I tried to use it. Windows would still recognize it when I inserted a CD, but it would not spin up. I took it out of the tower, opened the case, checked all the connectors, put everything back together and still nothing. I can only assume the motor had failed. If the information you have is important to you, take it to a shop and have someone look at it. A good tech can probably tell you if it is salvagable and what it will cost.
Note: You will have to right click the command prompt and select "Run as Administrator" to use chkdsk
In your case you might want to try: "chkdsk x: /f /r" (no quotes) where x is the drive letter, /f fixes errors on the disk, /r recovers data from bad sectors; note that a space is needed before each / mark
I've checked both sites with very minimal information. It seems when looking around the internet that I am not the only one that has had this same problem with this particular drive crapping out after awhile in the same fashion. But no one mentions if they ever get it fixed or follows up on it after people leave recover tips or the chkdsk notes etc. so I'm not really sure. I did the chkdsk run earlier but not the /f /r etc bc windows was not recognizing the drive so I couldn't specifically check that one. I have important college stuff on research on there I'd hate to lose, and some would be really hard to duplicate. (that WAS my backup, lol, so dont even say it), and I can't afford one of those crazy 800-1500 recovery firms.
I feel bad for you Snake, I wish there was something I could say or do at this point, but I'm out of ideas. If all your connections are good, and Windows does not recognize the drive as a system device, I don't know what else you can do. Maybe another forum member can come up with something for you to try at this point.
Have you tried booting using a linux disc with your external plugged in and seeing if it is seen outside of Windows?
As a very last, last, thing you can try, put the drive in the freezer for a couple of hours. Make sure the drive is wrapped in plastic and put inside a couple of freezer bags as no moisture must get on the drive. Plug back in and act fast.
I did a successful recovery using this once. But it is for a last chance only.
Just to confirm, this important info that would be hard to duplicate isn't stored on the Internal drive?
I'm confused by the statement the external was a backup device is all.
Definitely try @hazelnut suggestions as I have good success plugging in unreadable drives that Windows couldn't access but Linux could. And the freezer technique, although poo-poo'd by the purists has actually also worked once for me (out of maybe 6 to 8 attempts) so may have been complete coincidence but a win is a win.
Have not tried the freezer technique (mine is full of pickled bear steaks) but have tried linux, specifically Puppy linux 5.2.5 on an older win xp computer.
Puppy is not a very big download as operating systems go, and it runs in RAM so will not disturb the HDD you want to inspect.
It will show up most drives and partitions. It will let you copy data to another drive.
You might have to reassemble your drive.
You might want to use a newer version, I have only used ver 5.2.5, just because I had no choice.
Or there may be a better linux distro for your purpose...if so someone will probably chime in with the info.