Loose Connections On External Hard Drive

[byronwells]

Alright guys

I have got a Seagate 3TB Back Up Plus external hard drive which I have had for a few years. I have never ever dropped this drive and everything was fine until a few months ago, where I noticed the USB cable used to connect hard drive to machine seeming a bit loose... And sometimes it would drop out unless you move it to another position. Now yesterday the hard drive could not be found at all, and the actually connection felt really wiggly.

I open the case and found that the loose connection has completely broken off.. It was attached to a sata/bridge module that you can pull away from the laptop HDD that they use... There hard drive was and should be working perfectly..

I have then used another sata/usb bridge which I got from another external hard drive and connected it to the machine... The machine does find it.. However it now says it's a GPT protected Drive..

I need it to plug and play as before

[data-medics]

Seagate external hard drives often do a sector size mutation through the USB/SATA bridge. So if you're using a non-Seagate dock/adapter/etc., it's likely trying to read it using a different sector size than the data was written to the drive with.

That having been said, a 3Tb Seagate external is a ticking time bomb. Those ST3000DM001 drives had the worst failure rate in history. You're lucky it failed the way it did, there's still time to save your data now before it totally bombs out.

Last edited by data-medics on July 30th, 2018, 10:42, edited 1 time in total.

[byronwells]

Seagate external hard drives often do a sector size mutation through the USB/SATA bridge. So if you're using a non-Seagate dock/adapter/etc., it's likely trying to read it using a different sector size than the data was written to the drive with.

Seagate just told me that I can use usb-sata adapter and that should work...

[data-medics]

Seagate external hard drives often do a sector size mutation through the USB/SATA bridge. So if you're using a non-Seagate dock/adapter/etc., it's likely trying to read it using a different sector size than the data was written to the drive with.

Seagate just told me that I can use usb-sata adapter and that should work...

They don't know what they're talking about. They answer phones and try to get rid of warranty claims for a living. They have ZERO technical experience.

If you don't believe me, get a hex editor such as WinHex and open up sector 0 of the drive (then post a screenshot). We can confirm whether or not it's reading a correct sector size.

[byronwells]

Seagate external hard drives often do a sector size mutation through the USB/SATA bridge. So if you're using a non-Seagate dock/adapter/etc., it's likely trying to read it using a different sector size than the data was written to the drive with.

Seagate just told me that I can use usb-sata adapter and that should work...

They don't know what they're talking about. They answer phones and try to get rid of warranty claims for a living. They have ZERO technical experience.

If you don't believe me, get a hex editor such as WinHex and open up sector 0 of the drive (then post a screenshot). We can confirm whether or not it's reading a correct sector size.

Forget about the bridge module.. Just connect the actual hard drive itself via an usb-sata adapter to the laptop and it should find it that way.. I already had got one, but I don't think it was giving enough power the hard drive.. Because it would show up in device manager but not under explorer or computer management at all

[data-medics]

I'll say it again: get a hex editor such as WinHex and open up sector 0 of the drive (then post a screenshot). We can confirm whether or not it's reading a correct sector size.

If sector 0 doesn't end in hex characters 55 AA it's a sector size issue and it's not going to able to mount in Windows.

Or, check disk management (Control Panel > Admin Tools > Computer management > Disk Management) and see what it shows.

[byronwells]

It says that the drive is not initialized.. However I do not want to clean it because I have got a lot of data on it

[byronwells]

I have now removed the bridge and attached the laptop HDD that came out of the external hard drive casing using this https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01 ... UTF8&psc=1 which is now under computer management it saying that the disk needs to be initialized...

However I think I need to use one of these instead https://www.amazon.co.uk/USB-SATA-Adapt ... 1N2JIQR7...

I don't think I getting any power to it using the other cable.... If that makes sense

[rogfanther]

You can use a board from the same model as your broken one, or you can try to find someone to fix the original board of your disk.

Using common usb-sata bridges will not work, or you will need to keep trying until you get one that does the translation the same as the original seagate board.

Or you can believe in the seagate call center ....

[byronwells]

You can use a board from the same model as your broken one, or you can try to find someone to fix the original board of your disk.

Using common usb-sata bridges will not work, or you will need to keep trying until you get one that does the translation the same as the original seagate board.

Or you can believe in the seagate call center ....

I'm now not talking about the bridge port module... I am talking about just running the hard drive through as usb-sata cable to the machine... Bridge port is removed

[rogfanther]

A bridge is just that, something that converts from a SATA drive to an usb connection. Be it in the form of the little board of your original seagate, a usb hard disk caddy, or a "cable" with the electronics enclosed in rubber.

You still are converting from SATA to USB, and the chip involved in it may or not do the "sector size mutation" @data-medics described. And different ICs may do it in different ways.

The easier way still is to find the correct board, or fix yours if the intention is just to recover data.

[fzabkar]

@byronwells, you should be able to see your data with DMDE.

https://dmde.com/

Can you post DMDE's Partitions window? The file system will most probably be identified with a 4KB sector size. That poses a problem when the drive is connected internally (the OS expects to see 512-byte sectors). However, DMDE can handle this scenario.