cannot access seagate freeagent goflex ultra portable

[gao7857]

I have my seagate freeagent drive for a few years (>3 years). Works fine until about a week ago.

First the drive did not pop up after plug in usb. Cannot see it at all. The usb cable has been a bit loose so I ordered another cable which arrived two days ago. Still did not work. There is onely one drive in the disk (1TB).

So I plugged the drive in and opened disk manager. The disk is recognized there and shows it as healthy initially, but I cannot open the disk property. I unpluged the usb and pluged it back, below are what I got in couple times:
- The drive shows up in explorer, but when I double click to open, it take over 5 miniutes to read it, and then pop up something like Drive N: is not accessible.
- If I right click the drive and open property, it shows 0 bit (instead of 951GB); when I tries to check disk, it also take very long to try to read the drive but returns something like the drive is not accessible.
- One time after I plug the usb in, the computer found the drive, but pops up a windows asking me to format the drive before using it, and I did not format it.
- go back to disk manager, the drive was recognized as 951GB, but the status becomes RAW and unallocated.

I tried below ways to recover the data, assume (hope) its the logical damage:
- chkdsk does not work, it says chkdsk cannot do RAW format. When I change to chkdsk /f /r /x, it says cannot access the drive.
- tried EaseUS. Deep scan stuck at the beginning and find 0 file, after 18 hours still stuck at the beginning and always showing about 2:30 hours remaining.
- tried M3 Data Recovery. It scans for about 12 hours and at the end of the scan it pops up a windows says "the lost disk cannot be found".

I managed to open the drive cover. It seems a laptop hard disk inside. When I plug the cable with my laptop, I hear faint smooth sound like spining, plus a also small/faint but pulsive sound. The pulsive sound is small that you cannot hear it unless put your ear close to the drive.

So now I am stuck and a bit out of my wit, and I am looking for advice.
The data is important to me and I blame myself lots of times not replace the drive earlier.
There are couple things I can think of, and I am willing to try suggestions you may have.
- buy a SATA-usb cable with external power source. Assume its the low usb power supply that cannot drive the disk.
- open the disk to check if the reading head is stuck, assuming the faint pulsive sound is because of it. I am a mechanical engineer, but still fear that I could do something wrong and lose the data.

Please advise what would be the best approach. Thank you in advance!
-G

[data-medics]

I think you posted this same thing on my forum. I responded there already: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/canno ... html#p9333

[Blizzard]

1) If data is important you should send it to a data recovery lab.
2) chkdsk can cause a lot of destruction in a short amount of time.
3) If you hear buzzing or pulsing and do not hear the motor spinning it could very well be stuck heads.

You should really try to resist the urge to open the drive, but it's your drive and your data

[rogfanther]

Try to find an Y usb cable with two connectors that plug in the computer. If with that the drive works, backup your data to other hard disk.

If with that Y cable the drive is still not recognized, and you need the data, better send the drive to someone specialized. You already received this suggestion from data-medics that is a respected member of this forum

[gao7857]

Thank you for the quick response. I have responded you in the other forum.

I think you posted this same thing on my forum. I responded there already: https://www.data-medics.com/forum/canno ... html#p9333

[fzabkar]

Can you show us the drive's terminal log? Sometimes there is an easy fix/workaround.

You will need a USB-TTL adapter (US$5).