A few years ago I moved from Windows to Linux. I am very used to making backups on Windows, but when making my first backup on Linux, I simply used the default (GNOME) file transfer copy-and-paste method. However, in doing so, I think I may have unintentionally damaged my backup drive.

I was simply copying over my TBs of data and it took well over a night to 'finish'. I say 'finish' because it never finished - it seemed it was struggling towards the end. So I cancelled it. Then the cancel wasn't doing anything. I waited a few hours more before losing my patience and just unplugging it.

Little did I know that Linux is a lot less user-friendly when it comes to data transfer. With Windows, when the progress bar for general copy-and-paste file transfers are complete, they really are complete. For Linux, it could still be doing anything in the background - so I've learnt now to use the eject feature to make sure there is nothing going on in the background. It is odd that the progress bar for Linux shows the transfer is finished, but the data still be transferring in the background - hence an eject can sometimes take a good 10-20 minutes. Alas, I am ranting at this point.

To cut an already long story short, I plugged my drive back in and now it just makes an endless loading sound. Now I've had drives fail on me before - I know that familiar loud clicking sound of the spindle hitting the side of the drive when an HDD has catastrophically failed. This sound, however, sounds like it is just constantly loading in a loop of some kind. It sounds like some firmware or some part before any boot sectors or main partitions are read has been corrupted or something.

I'll post a video below for you all to judge, but overall I am wondering if this is repairable through software, or if I should consider this drive a loss.

You can also see in the video that the drive is only receiving power (no data connection/USB) and the issue still occurs.

https://youtu.be/VbHb5Uy0FPE
(Video is timestamped if it helps)

If any HDD enthusiasts have read this and are wanting a positive end to this story, I've already got a new backup drive and have been using it without any issues for the last few years using FreeFileSync (and making sure I eject the drive properly before powering it off).

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for reading

Hi

IIUC, your main goal is to repair the drive? If so, I'd say just bin it and move on.
If you want to spend some time on it and learn something, post terminal output here (search this forum how to do this).
By the sound of it, it's making a lot of background activities that needs to be turned off. It could be done through terminal, however I think these models have their terminal locked, so you can't send any commands. In that case, professional help/equipment is needed.

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Hi northwind, thanks so much for your informative response. If I'm just going to get rid of it, I might as well at least learn something as you suggested
I tried to search the forum and unfortunately with my choice of keywords I couldn't find any guides for connecting to the drive through serial.
Using the same keywords through Google has shown me this guide: https://atola.com/products/insight/manu ... ction.html
Is that relevant in this case? If so, I need to get a 2-mm RX-TX connector by the looks of it. I already have a serial cable that I can salvage.
Any further advice on how I can proceed would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks!

Yes that guide is relevant.
You can also buy USB to TTL kits, sold on ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from ... l&_sacat=0

Connect drive through serial as shown on the guide you've posted, launch Hyperterminal (or similar) and power on drive.

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SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners