My seagate freeagent can´t be found by the computer.

S

seagate on fritz

Obliviot
Ok, checking in.

I took the drive apart (a major pain). But, with the instructions posted and knowing where to start from, it was ok. I suck at these types of things, so other probably won't find it as bad.

I attached the drive to the PC with a dongle, and everything worked. I just went and got a Mad Dog external case and hooked it up a few minutes ago. Seems to be working thus far. I'm copying about 50GB of data over to it (while keeping the original stuff, just in case).

I'll play around with it and report back in another few days. But, thus far, I'm encouraged.
 
S

seagate on fritz

Obliviot
Oh, the external case I bought was $25 at radio shack. I didn't want to brave the best buys/comp usas/etc with holiday shopping in south florida.
 
S

seagate on fritz

Obliviot
I transferred about 25 GB from my hard drive to the seagate (in its new case) last night without a problem. The drive fired right up, responded and ran smooth. Success seems within my grasp.
 
V

Vicutu

Obliviot
I'm (most sadly) joining your ranks. My FreeAgent begun it's slow descent to the hell that spawned it. I had it for 3 months and i don't think it was used more than a 5 hours total (and about 40 gigs). Luckily i recovered all the important data from it with a repeated "put him out in the cold - stick it in the computer - use the 5 min of it running to it's best"

I bought it as a backup for my data so, after reading a lot about it on this forum and others, i can't trust it's replacement. So i'm very interested in the idea of de-casing it and using it in a separate USB rack. The drive itself looks to function right until it's overheating (all info on it could be recovered after cooling it) and the Seagate application tested it (in the 5 minutes till overheating) and reported he's ok.

So if u could report further behavior of your disk Fritz, i'd be very grateful....i was so happy to read all is "good" this morning....please keep us up to date
 
S

seagate on fritz

Obliviot
After putting it in the new case, I have not had a problem. I turn the case on, the drive powers up and stays working. I turn it off, and it actually goes off (unlike before when I had to pull the power cord out).

If it was still able to be returned, I'd bring the hell-spawned piece of crap back to the store where it was purchased. If not, I'd take it out of the case, buy a new case, and run it that way. Might as well get something for the money you already spent. I figured 25 for a case was better than 150 for a new drive.

Hope it works for you. I'll keep reporting back.
 
V

Vicutu

Obliviot
To return it i'd have to make a trip to germany (where i bought it) and i don't know if the store would replace it with another model. And i don't want another one of those i'd be afraid to use, thinking of losing all the data on it.

So i think i'll do the same and purchase a Vantec case for it. What do u think of this one: http://www.vantecusa.com/p_nst360u2.html ? It seems the hard inside FreeAgent is very heat sensitive, after cooling it (i didn't took it out of the case) at about 2-3C it works fine for about 5-9 min than gives an error. In the 5-9 minutes u can take any of the data on it (even the one it stoped at in previous session). So i hope with some decent cooling it will work fine all the time.

Good luck to us :)

I'll keep trolling around here for updates (i'm gonna do it in some 1-2 weeks when my budget will allow me to puchase the case). Till then i can use it as paperweight. :mad:

Cheers
 
S

seagate on fritz

Obliviot
Looks like a decent case.

I can tell you this much... This drive gets HOT!!! I think I will operate it with the case open in the future and just close it up when it's not in use.
 
Nick1696

Nick1696

Obliviot
:confused:Vicutu & seagate on fritz:confused: Did your drives make a beeping noise when they first broke down? because mine dose & i don't want to buy a new case if it won't help!
 
V

Vicutu

Obliviot
if i remember right it makes 1 loud "click" when starting. This happens one time when i plug it in. Did u tried to cool it and see if it works at last for a little amount of time Nick1696?
 
M

mfield

Obliviot
I just bought one of these to backup my 500gb internal drive. I had to do a disc recover on my internal drive and I just started to transfer the files across to the Seagate but it's very slow, would I be as well to exchange it or should I take out the drive and fit it to another caddy? Any help would be great.
 
Last edited:
D

dvs211

Obliviot
Hi, i am having a problem with my 250gb external drive. Im not sure if the power or if it is not being recognized by the computer. The yellow light doesnt come on anymore. I tried calling customer service, but they kept giving me the run around and the next thing i knew they told me it would cost from $700- 3000(usd) to recover the data. IM dobe with them, i just wanna kno if anyone can help me pinpoint the actual problem.
 
S

shakemistake

Obliviot
just recently had this problem
had the 500gb external hard drive for about a year, filled it up half way, about 300gb of information
one day my housemate knocked over the freeagent while it was in operation. it fell over about 4 inches unto soft carpet. after that the drive started making harsh metal grinding noises and fails to be found by my laptop.
i took it apart to see what the problem was
some people on this thread seemed to have faulty boards on their hard drives and got it to work when they removed the case
so i tried that, figuring it might be overheating or what have you
nope same grinding noise even after i had taken the drive completely out
so the way things stand, i believe i might have a dud drive
going to take it to a best buy or something to see if anyone can backup the information
the drive label says warranty would be void if drive was subject to 350gs of force? or something like that
mines just fell on a god damned carpet.
are you friggin serious.
i know hard drives need to be in a static position but i didn't know that a five inch drop would destroy it.
so much stuff lost if it is completely dead
stay away from this hard drive
 
Rory Buszka

Rory Buszka

Partition Master
If your hard drive is making mechanical grinding sounds, that's a sure way to tell that not only is the drive itself hosed, but there's virtually no chance of retrieving data. As you know, hard drives operate under hair-thin physical tolerances, with the magnetic read/write heads floating mere thousandths of an inch above the surface of the platters. If your drive experiences a physical shock that exceeds the drive's specifications for shock tolerance, the heads physically 'crash' into the surface of the disk, destroying data and practically ruining the drive itself. If this is what really happened to your drive, I wouldn't hold out any hope of recovering the data.
 
N

nguyenbr

Obliviot
THANK YOU SO MUCH

Hi, I found this thread on google after my freeagent desktop 500gig stopped working. Basically, I was moving it from one room to another, and I was surprised to see that the orange lcd suddenly was not working any more - I tried many things and could not get the damn thing to power up. I did not see or hear any indications that the hard drive had failed, so I thought I would try to open up the case and try the drive as an internal drive on my computer.

Long story short, the instructions posted here for prying open the case were VERY helpful as were the pictures. The drive itself was perfectly fine and so I blame the faulty circuitry of the external case. I am happy to have not lost any of the data and thus I am here today, signing up for a user account to express my gratitude.

Thanks!!!!
 
Nick1696

Nick1696

Obliviot
Seagate sucks

well I finally got the money to try to prepare my drive and i bought all new boards but to my dismay i was not able to get any of my data back and i voided the warranty by opening it!!!

but i fond a way to replays it for free... if you go to best buy and by a new one then switch the bottom plat you can take back the busted one and get you money back and still have a working drive... thats what i did!:eek::eek::eek:
 
T

tmvnz

Obliviot
Hi,
My 6 month old freeagent desktop 250GB will not power up after running fine up until now, I contacted seagate and they told me to try another cord, which I'll do but I'm not hopeful. I was advised by seagate that if I provided a letter from a data retrieval company then opening the case would not void the warranty. The messages and photos in this thread have been very helpful.
 
V

Vicutu

Obliviot
well for me the situation ain't that bad, i took apart the drive a couple of days ago and right now it's mounted as a internal in a pc and works fine. I really can't understand if the problems are from drive overheating or a faulty integrated circuits board - i tend to suspect the second as the drive lost its mechanical head parking noise since i mounted it in the computer. Ordering right now a vantec enclosure for it :)
 
T

tmvnz

Obliviot
Hi,
The best option for me was to remove the hard drive from the seagate case and put it in a off the shelf HD enclosure (Nexstar3). All good now. My warranty is now void but my priority was retrieving my data. The problem with the seagate external HD (desktop 250GB) was, i believe, the power supply.

Seagate told me that a letter could be provided by a data retrieval company then opening the case would not void the warranty but I was impatient and needed to access the data asap.

A few lessons learnt - back up is a copy of data, not a single version. Portable hard drives have precise moving parts and are not flash drives, portable hard drives need to be moved around carefully.
 
H

hiyman

Obliviot
Vicutu said:
well for me the situation ain't that bad, i took apart the drive a couple of days ago and right now it's mounted as a internal in a pc and works fine. I really can't understand if the problems are from drive overheating or a faulty integrated circuits board - i tend to suspect the second as the drive lost its mechanical head parking noise since i mounted it in the computer. Ordering right now a vantec enclosure for it :)
Click to expand...

How do I mount the hard drive as an internal drive. I got the external one taken apart and got the hard drive out but can't figure out how to get it installed as an internal.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top