1

My Seagate Expansion 3TB External hard drive is now useless and has caused me a lot of pain as it does not open any more.

There are lot of documents and information there in to which I have no more access as the documents cannot down load. When I connect it to my PC it vibrates and the green light comes on but does not transfer the data to the computer.

What can I do in this case? Please help me to retrieve my documents.

Giacomo1968
  • 53,069
  • 19
  • 162
  • 212
patrick kpaka
  • 11
  • 1
  • It might be that the drive itself is dead. The external drive is not magical; it’s just a 3TB SATA drive in an external case. If you want to, you can remove the actual 3TB drive itself and install it in an external SATA to USB enclosure and see if that can make the data accessible again. But you might have to face the fact the drive is dead with no chance of recovery. – Giacomo1968 Sep 29 '15 at 04:25
  • If it is vibrating badly, it sounds a bit like the disk itself is broken, not the enclosure and its electronics. As a last attempt to get the data I support @JakeGould 's comment. Take the drive out and connect it to something and retry data retrieval. – Mogget Sep 29 '15 at 06:49
  • If your drive is really dead, there are restore companies that can take it apart and read it low-level. Costs several 100s of dollars, depending on your value of the documents it might be worth it. In any case take this as a lesson. ALWAYS back up to several places. What you currently have is called "Single Point of Failure" and it just did fail. – KarmaEDV Sep 29 '15 at 07:48
  • 1
    possible duplicate of [How to restore information from dead HDD?](http://superuser.com/questions/454253/how-to-restore-information-from-dead-hdd) – KarmaEDV Sep 29 '15 at 07:49
  • It's possible that the HDD is dying. You could look for the HDD manufacturer testing tool and run the short/quick test it offers. If it fails the test you might need to use the services of a data recovery company to retrieve the data. You should also try connecting it to a different computer and using a different USB cable. Check the original model of the external. Some external HDDs have built-in hardware encryption, should that be the case the data won't be readable without the enclosure. – Techpumpkin_WD Sep 29 '15 at 13:59

1 Answers1

0

If your not worried about any type of warranty. In this case I would crack open the external casing and pull out the hard drive, this will allow you to by pass the sata to usb adapter. Which if your very lucky is the issue.

At this time it would be nothing more then an internal sata hard drive. Turn off your computer and Plug the drive in to an open sata port and start the computer up. With any luck you may be able to access the data.

If not, it would mean the drive is dead and not much you can really do about it. Good luck

Dave
  • 84
  • 1
  • 1
  • 7