External HDD borked

[ThanosIsKing]

I've been using my Seagate 2TB external hard drive for a few years now with no problems. Last night when I plug in the drive to a power outlet the thing starts in with a low beeping noise, sporadic, like every 2 seconds or so. I try looking up the support page and looking on other support web sites but nothing works. I've got A LOT of pictures and documents saved on that thing that I can't lose. Is there anything I can do to fix the damn thing?

[otakuneko]

You can open the enclosure up, take the drive out and either install the drive in your computer or use one of these.

If you're lucky it's only the IDE/SATA to USB bridge in the enclosure that's failed and not the drive itself. External drives do have a higher failure rate than normal though, likely due to heat or cheap power supplies.

Note that you'll probably end up breaking something in the process of opening the enclosure. This is fine as a vital component has failed so the enclosure is useless anyway. Not to mention it may have killed a drive, in which case you don't want to keep it.

[ThanosIsKing]

I was afraid of that. The thing is that the drive starts in with that low beeping noise when I plug it into a power supply. It doesn't even have to be connected to anything computer-related and it starts in with the beeping immediately when I plug it into my power strip.

[otakuneko]

Yeah that doesn't sound good. Only way to know for sure if the drive itself is dead though is to pry the case open and take the drive out for testing.

...which reminds me, I've got an external that's a few years old that I should backup as soon as I finish building my new file server (8 TB! )...

[prjkt]

Just attempted to save a friend's external drive last night. Unfortunately it was the HDD itself that was dead, not the enclosure.

I was lucky a couple of years back. Had a faulty enclosure with a pristine drive, and a friend's perfectly functioning enclosure with a dead drive that she no longer wanted. 10 minutes with a screwdriver and I had a drive that still functions today.

[emax4]

I was lucky a couple of years back. Had a faulty enclosure with a pristine drive, and a friend's perfectly functioning enclosure with a dead drive that she no longer wanted. 10 minutes with a screwdriver and I had a drive that still functions today.

The screwdriver... on the friend or the drive?

G'night folks! I'll be here all week...

[Ophbalance]

If you find that it's still not working in a new enclosure, assuming you go that route, it may be that the drive heads have gotten stuck in the parked position. Give it a few gentle taps to see if it unsticks. Otherwise... there are data recovery places out there. They're really "holy shit you want how much???" pricey, but they're out there.