Hi guys,

having a spot of trouble with the mentioned Seagate hdd and read through the forum finding out that these generallly are a pain in the...

Anyhow, the problem is that all of sudden the drive became not recognizble after a quick power off/on because of a loose USB plug. It had the same happen every now and then (maybe trouble with the usb port current), but it cleared on it's own without having to touch anything. Now this time it is recognized only in "Devices and Printers (Win7)" for a short period of time and then it comes unplugged and vanishes. The system even starts to install drivers, but it ends up failing with "device unplugged". Trying to eject it safely via right-click from the Expansion icon in Devices and Printers while it is visible comes up with a message of the drive being busy. In device manager it comes as either a USB mass storage device or other device (unknown device). Tried uninstalling them and restarting only to have it fail installing drivers presumably because of the persistent busy status.

It spins up normally or at least it sounds whizzing the same as any start-up before, heads sound to be moving as usually in start-up, no clicking or other catastrophic noises. And if you remove the cable it sounds like a normal power-off. But after a while it simply unplugs itself and is left spinning with nothing audible happening at least for a minute or two (haven't kept an ear on it for longer) and after that the system has also lost it (obviously). And there's no rattles inside when you turn it around every which way, so nothing has come apart or is loose, I guess. So I'm pretty sure there is no real physical damage. Also it didn´t have read/write problems when it was usable.

Any ideas how to begin with the goal of retrieving at least the most important files that are the only copies?

In short your seagate external USB drive is intermittent - Model ?

If it's a sata drive in a usb enclosure connect it via sata directly and see if that stabilizes it, if not we're going to need more relevant information to be able to assist in fault finding.

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The case says model SRD0NF1 and the drive itself SDC003.

Haven't tried to connect it directly via SATA-USB-bridge yet, because my stable power supply is at another location, so that'll be shortly. However, tried it in a laptop's own hdd bay and booted from a USB stick. Doesn't show up anywhere.

The device's own sata-usb adapter seems to be working fine with other disks. They become totally usable although labeled as Seagate Expansion drive.

And of course, ask away any bit of information you may see important.

Not showing in the bios is a bad sign, and if the dock works with other drives that rules that out, I'm not a fan of testing in laptops though.

If you can test on a proper computer that would be better - I get the feeling we're going to need the terminal output.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

I was thinking too that it'd require a terminal to sort out. Or at least to diagnose. Problem is in finding a desktop PC. I might have some old one laying around somewhere or then again not.

Will have a look though. I'm not opposed to having it tested on a laptop with some makeshift comm to usb-contraption as far as it can be done without making it worse. If it can be.

Actually I found a printer to usb adapter, but this is parallel. I suppose this cannot be utilized for communicating with the drive...

Yeah never mind. That's no use. I can't even remember readily these old school technologies Keeping the soldering iron in the closet for now.

However I seem to have all sorts of connectors and wires available.

Lithops,
Waste of time.
This disc is locked for techno access. Only on a complex like PC 3000 can be done. So if the data is really needed only in the DR firm.

Something tells me you didn't read enough .....

Hey guys. Just dropping by to tell, that this problem is on a backburner for a while. My dad died recently and I'm having busy things wrapping it up officially.

So I'll get back when it calms down.

Sorry to hear...
pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Condolences

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