Portable HDD Failed

[Olleco]

Hi all,

Some time ago, one of my portable hard drives decided to fail on me. Of course, what did i expect from a seagate drive? 

I've tried almost everything i can think of to recover the files from the drive, but nothing has seemed to work. 

When i plug the drive into my computer, the usual windows sound chimes, and i can hear the platters spin up, along with the reader arms. However, the drive doesn't show up on my computer. I've tried to navigate into the disk management and it's informing me to initialise the drive, which i don't want to attempt doing, as it'll wipe the data i have stored on there. I have tried numerous programs but none of them seem to show anything on the drive. It's now came to the point where i have no other option but to initialise the drive and see whether i can recover any of the files using a data recovery program, or even opening the drive up and inspect whether the reader arm has become stuck on the platters. I'm wondering if anyone on here would know any solutions to my problem and could possible help me rectify it. I have attached a recording of the drive that shows the drive starting up, i wanted to see whether the sounds that are heard are part of normal operation. 

 

If anyone could help me with this, it would be much appreciated! 

hdd.wav

[EsaT]

5 minutes ago, Olleco said:

even opening the drive up and inspect whether the reader arm has become stuck on the platters.

Why not just save everyones time and smash drive with big enough blunt instrument?

Opening the drive would be one of the surest things to do to make sure data is even harder to recover!

Only thing you should do is removing external drive from its case to attach it directly to PC or to some USB dock.

USB box itself might have failed.

 

And clear failed drive sound are very peciliar

http://datacent.com/failing_hard_drive_sounds

[Olleco]

Well, opening it up is a last resort. I have removed the plastic housing but i have found that the drive isn't any average one. There's a motherboard on the back that screwed down, so i can't simply plug it into a computer or a dock. Although, it may be the board that has failed, but if that was the case, would the drive still spin up? I have noticed that the blue light indicator on the board no longer illuminates which could tell me something? 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

It may be getting power still, but something else on the drive's board could have failed which prevents it from transmitting any data. 

After reading your latest post I assume that it's one of those drives that comes with a USB3 port on the board rather than a SATA one.  The absence of a proper SATA port kinda screws you over when stuff like this happens.

 

If you have a backup of the data, I'd suggest just destroying the drive and getting another one. 

If you don't have a backup and the data is worth enough money to you, get in touch with a professional recovery firm.  Don't just buy another identical drive and try to swap the boards over yourself, they're usually connected right to the motor using some soldered-on plastic ribbon cables.  That's not something you want to deal with yourself, and attempting to do it will only make professional data recovery more expensive.