Seagate hdd quit working all of a sudden

[RJ]

Hello all,

today I've got a problem. My hard drive D:, a Seagate Medialist ST317242A, quit working all of a sudden. I can neither access it anymore, nor is it recognized by BIOS.

I haven't tried the Seagate Diagnostic tool yet (it's 11:27pm now. . I'll do that tomorrow), but:

The drive is not recognized by BIOS. I tried the other IDE ports, nothing. The IBM drive is recognized, so the IDE ports are ok. The cables are all connected properly (as I mentioned, it quit working all of a sudden. I was in Windows and was able to access it, and it just happened).
Now I also hear some strange noises from the hard drive (tones that change every few seconds).

Could it be that the drive has gone south ? If it crashed, wouldn't I hear it ? I think it's not crashed, but how do I recover some data ? (Luckily it wasn't my C: drive with over 40GB of data. . D: drive only had programs, games, and 600 E-Mails that I have not saved yet, and some other data that are not saved yet and I don't want to loose).

TIA,

RJ

[Leef]

Sounds like it died to me

And if it isn't making sounds...then possibly the spindle motor is what died. Or, maybe something got inside of it. I've heard stories of strange thinks clogging the inside. Everything from lots of dust to ANTS! (Yes...I heard of ants clogging one up before.)

There are places that can recover data for you...but I can't remember any now. I'm sure someone else can post some.

[Hpro]

RJ - Because it's a SEAGATE -..they usually die like that..forget about it - seagate have only one good thing on them and that's the warranty - and the fast exchange when claiming warranty - so all you need to do is sending it back waiting for a new drive and then the countdown restarts - to the day it will die.. that's why the good warranty..

Yes I had a western Dig drive where the ANTS went in through the Exhaust hole - every hard drive has one.. - have the drive still here - with a broken of reading head on the top platter...

[RJ]

Thanks for the replies. .. seems that it's a common problem with Seagates.

Okay, so it seems obvious.. the seagate is dead. Well, being not even 3 years old that's a shame. . at least my new drive is IBM and not seagate.

RJd

[Leef]

Ahhh....so that's where I heard the ant story

Couldn't remember if it was here or not :P

Oh, btw. I just got me a new IBM and I love it as much as my Maxtor. It's awesome!

[Penguin]

RJ,

Sometimes when a hrad drive motor is going bad, it will stop spinning. When it does it won't be recognized. However, sometimes you can take the drive out shake and twist it. Maybe even bump it a little. This sometimes will cause the motor to jog a little and when you start the computer up the drive will spin and be recognized. Then you can get any info you need off of it. This just happened to a computer here at work and I had to take the drive in and out and shake and bump it a few times before it started.

The motors are just like a starter on your car. If the starter starts to go bad you can hit it with a hammer to jog the motor and then you can start your car, but you can only do this a few times before it is finally dead.

[RJ]

Hmm. Well I tried and the seagate was recognized again. Could boot into WinXP again. The first times it ran about 2 minutes then it froze again and I had to restart. That way I copied the data I need off the hard drive. After doing this 5 times the drive has kept running.

So it's the motor that isn't ok anymore. I wonder for how long the drive will run. .and what I'm going to do with it. . Hmm. . maybe I use it for video capturing only. . that way I won't loose anything when it finally goes dead.

Thanks again,

RJ

[Penguin]

It probably won't stay running for very long. Mine was the "C" drive so when it stopped the computer would shutdown and try to restart. Then it would post "No OS found.".

[Streams]

Well I hope my seagate does'int die on me. I need another HD anyway so i might get a fujisu.