New External HDD dead?

[Daventh]

So a friend got a Seagate STEA1000400 External HDD from Amazon and backup his data in it to re-install the OS, the drive lasted about 2 and a half days until he plugged it and froze the PC, rebooted and now the drive doesn't show in windows explorer when connected and on device manager  it shows as unassigned and uninitialized, also the led on the drive doesn't turn on, is this drive dead? and if so, can something be done to recover the data? (other than costly data recovery services)

[Streetguru]

2 minutes ago, Daventh said:

So a friend got a Seagate STEA1000400 External HDD from Amazon and backup his data in it to re-install the OS, the drive lasted about 2 and a half days until he plugged it and froze the PC, rebooted and now the drive doesn't show in windows explorer when connected and on device manager  it shows as unassigned and uninitialized, also the led on the drive doesn't turn on, is this drive dead? and if so, can something be done to recover the data? (other than costly data recovery services)

Is there anything important on it?

You could try running test disk through a linux USB with the drive hooked up over USB.
 

 

[ravneillal]

Try to have that drive plugged into another PC, It has happened to me a few times in the past with seagate drives not responding on pcs and freezing them. Sometimes i had to open the drive and plug it directly inside the pc using sata then it picks.

[Daventh]

2 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Is there anything important on it?

You could try running test disk through a linux USB with the drive hooked up over USB.
 

 

Sorry I got no experience at all with Linux, do you mean runnin Linux through the usb drive?

[Daventh]

7 minutes ago, ravneillal said:

Try to have that drive plugged into another PC, It has happened to me a few times in the past with seagate drives not responding on pcs and freezing them. Sometimes i had to open the drive and plug it directly inside the pc using sata then it picks.

Tried on 2 different PCs, doesn't freeze them anymore, it simply doesn't show up in windows explorer or turn on now. Also the drive is still in warranty so he isn't too enthusiastic about opening it.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Daventh
Incomplete information

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, Daventh said:

Sorry I got no experience at all with Linux, do you mean runnin Linux through the usb drive?

Right, you just download the ubuntu or linux mint ISO, make a bootable flash drive with rufus

 

then search up tutorials about running and using test disk.

If the drive isn't even spinning up though I have no idea. You could try ripping it apart to see if it's just a sata hard drive, but then returning it/exchanging it becomes an issue.

[Daventh]

2 hours ago, Streetguru said:

Right, you just download the ubuntu or linux mint ISO, make a bootable flash drive with rufus

 

then search up tutorials about running and using test disk.

If the drive isn't even spinning up though I have no idea. You could try ripping it apart to see if it's just a sata hard drive, but then returning it/exchanging it becomes an issue.

Ok got into the TestDisk site and noticed it has a Windows version, is there a difference if I use a Wndows version instead of Linux and also if run from a bootable drive or from the OS?

[Streetguru]

6 minutes ago, Daventh said:

Ok got into the TestDisk site and noticed it has a Windows version, is there a difference if I use a Wndows version instead of Linux and also if run from a bootable drive or from the OS?

Does the hard drive spin up at all? If it's not getting power it won't work with test disk anyways.

 

But test disk is likely better to use under linux, since windows isn't recognizing the drive.

 

[Daventh]

Just now, Streetguru said:

Does the hard drive spin up at all? If it's not getting power it won't work with test disk anyways.

 

But test disk is likely better to use under linux, since windows isn't recognizing the drive.

 

He says that it doesn't make any noise at all so I presume that it isn't spinning, I find it strange that it shows up at all in Disk Manager though.

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, Daventh said:

He says that it doesn't make any noise at all so I presume that it isn't spinning, I find it strange that it shows up at all in Disk Manager though.

If it gets working partially under test disk just save the important files then use Gparted to do a more advanced formatting like changing the partition table.