I have a problem that no one at Seagate can figure out, and they want to charge me $399 to send it in. I thought I would ask the gurus here first.

My ancient Powermac G5, OS X.4.11, has been using several external GoFlex Freeplays for years, all formatted using GUID Mac Journaled, but all of a sudden one of the hard drives will not show an icon on the desk top. The System Profiler sees it and registers its serial #. Disk Utility recognizes it, but won't let me drag its icon onto the desktop or another backup hard drive. Disk Utilty can scan, suggests I fix "minor" , says "Volume Bit Map needs minor repair", then in RED: "Volume Header needs minor repair. The volume needs to be repaired. Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit." Then in black: "1 HFS volume checked. Volume needs repair." Then a prompt says, "First Aid Failed. Disk Utility stopped verifying "disk2s2" because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit."

I then click "Repair Disk" and its little blue line goes to the end... but never finishes.

Software I've tried: Seagate's own file recovery software simply freezes during "initializing," Data Rescue 3 can only detect 33.33% of it and then freezes or reports a very slow access and recommends quitting. The latest Disk Warrior won't run on 10.4.11. Should I try a different program, say, Test Disk?

Should I try some other way of plugging it in? I switched cords/interfaces, to no avail. An eSATS dock? Some other hardware?

Mainly I would just love to be able to see how the pros do it without paying the pro price. I am also willing to reformat the drive and then use a data recovery program to salvage important documents. But at this point, I just want to solve the mystery and learn something all noobs like me should.

Thanks so much.

Check the drive and PCB on the drive and see if its overheating to a unreasonable level. it might get too hot and fail.

PCB probably us fine. Errors seem to be with reading of surface, probably the media has bad sectors which would allow for full identification of model, SN etc, but would limit access to the surface and depending which sectors are affected will possible prevent mounting.

At this stage a recovery should not be so difficult, but the more it is used the more you will initiate bad block management schemes such as relocation which could complicate it further.

Totally agree.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Ok, so if the circuit board is fine, what kind of recovery should I initiate? Is my only option to send it in somewhere or is there software you can recommend?

It depends on the importance of the data. If it's imperative and you want the best chance of recovery, then yes send it to a pro now before it gets worse.

But if it's not that important then you can try DIY options, AT YOUR OWN RISK and could make matters a lot worse very quickly and possibly non-recoverable.

If you accept the risks then you can try cloning the drive to a good one with NON-WINDOWS based sw such as dd_rescue or media tools pro. Then run recovery sw such as getdataback of rstudio on the clone.

Good luck

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!