Hard drive failure?

[preachy]

Hi
I have a 1000gb seagate hard drive that I use(d) to store all my media, pictures docs, vids, everything really. it was partitioned as a game drive as well. anyway, its probably 12 months old and recently the pc wouldn't boot. so i disconnected all the drives except c: and it was fine. whenever i reconnected this drive the pc wouldn't boot. this morning I connected it and left the pc for 20 minutes and it finally booted.
The drive was viewable in my computer for a moment where it looked like it was empty instead of almost full, then it disappeared. its not viewable in seatools, my computer or disk management. any advice on what i can do?

as always, thanks in advance

matt

[Digerati]

I would try this drive in a different computer as a secondary drive and it does not show up then, it is pretty certain it is bad. Most Seagate drives are warrantied for at least 3 years so you will need to contact them for an RMA.

If it does show up in the second computer, I would run Seatools on it to make sure it is okay.

[Ensign Tzap]

Matt,

I agree with Digerati.

Try it on a different Computer as a Secondary Slave Drive.
Or.....
If you have a SATA to USB Converter.
Connect it to the other Computer that way.

I hope you did a backup, or have copies of all the stuff on that drive.
Otherwise you'll have to go to a Data Recovery Service to get it back.


Signed: Ensign Tzap

[SpywareDr]

Ontrack, DriveSavers and Datarecovery are three well-known and respected* companies that can attempt to retrieve files off of a 'dead' hard drive. Pricing typically runs between a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars (US).

There is no guarantee that usable data will be recovered however. If a drive is too damaged, the data is effectively gone. Also, if a drive was encrypted and the customer doesn't have the encryption key, recovery becomes extremely unlikely. Many hard drive manufacturers sell self-encrypting drives, with the decryption key on the drive's circuit board. In those cases, data-recovery requires the original, working circuit board.

Physical damage can leave a drive permanently unreadable. If the read/write heads have scraped the magnetic coating off the platter, there's nothing to recover. Dropping the drive can shatter glass platters, and no one is going to get magnetic bits off glass shards.

Overwriting files -- intentionally or otherwise -- renders the erased bits unreadable. Overwriting a sector once is just as secure as the fabled Gutmann method, which rewrites sectors 35 times. Today's drives pack data so tightly there's no room for ghosts of previous bits.

*Western Digital "Platinum Data Recovery Partners"

[preachy]

hi guys, thank you all for the replies.
as it turns out the drive is completely unresponsive. I've tried it in other pcs with no joy so i guess its basically a write off.

many thanks

matt