Trying to save a dying external HDD

[Enigma]

Seagate ftw.

I once got a Seagate...i turned it on and it died

[Enigma]

Seagate ftw.

I once got a Seagate...i turned it on and it died

[purplepolecat]

I once got a Seagate...i turned it on and it died
I once got a Seagate...i turned it on and it died

Castor said "Seagate FTW" but OMG he lied
I once got a Seagate...i turned it on and it died

[Kaream]

I once got a Seagate...i turned it on and it died

I got one cause of you.

[NS]

With like any brand of HDD I know somebody who had a bad experience with them. Because of this I have come to the conclusion that it's basically luck.

[Pwolf]

With like any brand of HDD I know somebody who had a bad experience with them. Because of this I have come to the conclusion that it's basically luck.

Well its also which hard drive you buy. DO NOT BUY THE CHEAPEST DRIVE YOU SEE. Unless you plan on buying two of them and running them in a mirrored raid (even then that's pushing it since some drives are better in raid setups then others). Do some research. Some drives are better then others even though they might have the same branding on them. For example, I purchased a hard drive from Fry's (several actually), Western Digital Black series. Supposed to be top of the line for their desktop consumer line. Turns out that specific model i purchased is shit and it died within a year . This has happened to me 3 times in the last two years, same WD Black series from frys, same issue. After researching model numbers, turns out they suck. So i buy from newegg now and research what i'm going to buy.

The best advice I can give anyone is buy two internal drives and put them in a mirrored RAID. it cost double for amount of disk space but you are investing in your data. If one of the drives dies, you can get the bad one replaced under warranty in about a week. It cost you $11 to ship UPS 2 day air back to WD and about a week for them to send you a replacement, doesn't get any easier then that. stick the drive back in and let the raid controller rebuild your data and it's as if nothing had happened.

Other piece of advice is to not use external drives for consistent daily use. Two reason: There's more that can go wrong and you don't know what's in the drive enclosure. An external drive has the hard drive that can go bad but it also has the interface controller board. Not to mention it's more prone to issue with the computer's drivers and software. Since it's not in the system it's prone to being kicked or knocked over as well. The second reason is, if something did go wrong, like what happened here, taking the drive out of the enclosure will most likely void the warranty. So doing any recovery methods yourself short of opening the hard drive up and replacing parts, will void the warranty and you wont be able to get a replacement drive. External drives should only be used for moving data from one system to another if they aren't connected in some other way. I wouldn't even recommend them for backups. I know the are simple to use and convenient at times but when it comes to protecting your data, they are rather useless.

If you are dead-set on using an external drive the number one thing (even if you are using internal drives) you should do is if ANYTHING seems weird with the drive, back that shit up immediately and run diagnostics on it. All hard drive manufacturers have diagnostic software you can download and use. I'm pretty sure they have software for external drives also that will monitor them for errors, maybe, maybe not. If errors show up, make sure everything is backed up and send it back to the manufacturer for replacement.

[Devolution]

take the drive itself(not the enclosure), read the model number off it, go on Ebay, buy a 100% identical drive, peel the controller board off the old drive, replace it with the one off the 'new' drive you just bought.

worked for me when i had an old 80gb WD drive fail on me, but rather than intermittent power loss like you're experiencing, my drive just didn't get power at all.