hello. i am a newbie to the forum and hdd troubleshooting in general.

i have a seagate st3300801cbrk, 300 gb external that stopped being recognized in windows. the drive started sounding "funny", not really whining, but more like if a cooling fan was spinning fast and rubbing against something. the drive still seems to be getting power. i have tried several simple fixes.

first, i tried changing cables, both usb & firewire. a couple times, disconnecting and reconnecting the usb cable made the drive recognize in winxp pro, but soon produced an error message saying the usb device malfunctioned. firewire produced no recognition in windows.

next, i disassembled the drive case. the drive inside is seagate model: barracuda 7200.8, 300gb, st3300831a, sn: 3nf06kh9, pn: 9y7284-560, fw: 3.01.
i tried hooking the drive up to my desktop ide cable and power, but the drive never seemed to get power and never recognized.

finally, i hooked the drive up to it's harness (usually inside the case) while it was out of the case. again, the drive seemed to get power and made the same noise as described above, but did not recognize.

i would appreciate any input on this issue. i have files on this drive that i really don't want to lose. seagate recovery wants $700 smackers just to get started.

thanks in advance,
jurgey

Could you record this sound?