Busted Seagate portable

[bricat]

So I dropped my Seagate backup plus portable hard drive. Needless to say it does not work now. Can these be fixed? Used once whilst overseas. Not happy...cheers Brian

[nardes]

Sorry to hear of your misfortune with the HDD.

Unless the HDD is designed to be rugged, if I had a dropped HDD I would not trust it again other than attempt to get my data off it onto another one.

I once read an analogy about the Read/Write Heads on a HDD, along the lines that it's as if a recording head was a jumbo jet flying across a football pitch at cruising speed; but one inch above it and counting every blade of grass.

Cheers

Dennis

[ameerat42]

I suppose it depends on what's broken. If it's the controller board, an identical one, carefully swapped
should work. (Ah, Seagates and crook board! - And not even dropped. Stuff of the 90s)
If heads have hit the platters then maybe unrecoverable, but they're pretty tough.

Is it USB powered, or does it have separate power supply? What happens when you try to start it up?
Can you hear anything at all?

[Hamster]

If it's a backup I'd just get a new drive and back things up again asap. Once done chuck the dropped one.

[Warbler]

Here you go thrill-seeker...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Y7BniaRXg

- - - Updated - - -

Hopefully it doesn't look like this inside.

https://youtu.be/MU6TZxwyg0w

[ameerat42]

Most informative! Ta Warbs.

[Warbler]

And from a pro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hQZ09sdcRs

[Warbler]

And, the tools to do the job:

http://www.hddsurgery.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwGJep8zmbo

[bricat]

So it makes a squeaky noise on start up then stops maybe 3-5 seconds later. Sounds just like the video. I bought this in some back street on an Alaskan tour up the north west passage so I was only interested in capacity to store my photo's after being caught out with not enough MMC.
Specs http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTe...024-HN-M101MBB

So big brave boy decides to have a go. Hmmm no screws to remove outer layer. Must be clipped together so needs brute force. I have 2 of those attributes. Crack/bang/screech I get a start and eventually remove the casing all be it that I now need some gaffer tape to cover a few tears. I did say I had brute and force.
Now the delicate part. Wife can you unscrew these for me? %##$(%$@# Answer understood loud and clear NO. I have 3 different packs of torq tools and every damn one of them is too big or wrong size/shape. This now calls for a rethink but I'm a lot closer than I was before I started.

Thanks for the information it has helped me get this far cheers Brian

PS If I fix the drive is it a temporary fix or throw away as was suggested?

[MissionMan]

Generally speaking I would say no. If there are photos on it that are worth a lot to you, you can get them recovered but it isn't cheap.

It's one of the reasons I am moving my portable backups to SSD. Drop them, and they are fine.

[Warbler]

PS If I fix the drive is it a temporary fix or throw away as was suggested?

No, it's a throw away. If you manage to get it working, it should only be long enough to get the data off it. I'd only do this if you can't afford a professional data recovery. I also wouldn't bang it like the british guy says to do in his video. Good luck with the process. Let us know how you go.

[ameerat42]

I'd agree. But for a L, you could have it as a sort of a "test backup machine". Hook it up to something you use a lot and throw copies of your
saved work at it. See what happens, and you'll lose nothing if it carks. Pull it apart again after that and report back in this thread