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Seagate/RockDisk HD unrecognized

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by IronBill, 2010/04/12.

  1. 2010/04/12
    IronBill

    IronBill Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hi. I have a Rockdisk model HD2-U2 external hard drive that contains a Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (250 GB). I use it primarily for back up, but moved all my music there pending a new computer purchase. It has functioned well and normally on both the old and new computers (Acer Aspire One netbook running Windows XP).

    The system no longer recognizes the USB connected drive in any of it's 3 USB ports. Having searched the various posts here, I have tried the following: replace USB cable, run SIW (doesn't "see" the hardware), run the SeaGate diagnosics (also doesn't see it), attempted to install it via the control panel->new hardware (never finds it), tried it in the old computer (says its "running normally ", but never shows up in Explorer).

    Power supply seems good (light is green...had been orange until I plugged it into the old computer) and you can hear the drive spinning and moving the read head. It's making a quiet, high pitched whine. If I had a dog, it would be howling.

    I care more about the data than the actual hardware. How do I bring it back to life?

    The last time it worked properly, I had copied "My Documents "...which took a while--maybe an hour? I very well may have forgotten to "Safely Remove Hardware" (Doh!)
     
    IronBill,
    #1
  2. 2010/04/13
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    I find Safely Remove Hardware is the first place I check. Does it show anything? It might show "USB Mass Storage Device ", but without a drive letter allocated.

    Right-click on My Computer and select Manage. Go to Disk Management and see if the drive is shown there. See if you can allocate a drive letter for it.

    After that, you will need to get serious. Take the drive out of the enclosure and connect it into a desktop PC (you will need to dismantle it anyway if it is making a noise). See if it shows up in My Computer. Right-click on the drive and select Properties -> Tools tab, run Error Checking on it, put checks in the boxes for "Automatically fix..." and "Scan for... ", leave it to run overnight (don't crash out if it seems to stall).

    You can try running the Seagate utilities when it is connected like that.

    Matt
     
    mattman,
    #2


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  4. 2010/04/13
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Welcome to WindowsBBS :)

    You have one of two issues - either the hard drive has failed or the disk controller in the external case has failed. I have not come across an external drive in which the light colour changed -generally the light is static when at rest and flashing when reading/writing, sometimes the power and read/write lights are separate.

    I am sure that you have checked out the USB ports with another USB device, but as the problem remains on the old computer it does not seem to be a USB problem.

    External hard drives are often configured for quick removal (no need to Safely Remove, although I would not recommend that) by default so simply pulling the drive is unlikely to cause this problem IMO.

    I suggest you remove the drive from the external case and connect it to a desktop as slave - may need to twist a friend's arm here if you don't have a desktop :) and see if it is recognised.

    Alternatively you could try connecting the bare drive to your laptop using an adaptor of the type shown here ....

    http://www.google.com/search?source...=1T4GGLL_en-GBGB352GB352&q=USB+to+IDE+adapter
     
    PeteC,
    #3
  5. 2010/04/13
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    I see Matt was quicker this morning :D
     
    PeteC,
    #4

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