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Ext. FW800 Hard Drive won't mount

KettyKrueger

KettyKrueger

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 17, 2007
509
4
UK
Hi All

My Seagate 'For Mac' 1TB drive just decided to act funny.

The power light is still on but last night it wouldn't spin down (or rather, the light wouldn't go out). Now I haven't heard it spin since, it won't mount, I cant's see it in Disk Utility and it's not viable using Seagate's Drive software.

I've tried a different power cable, different FW lead, used a USB lead, reset SMC, reset PRAM and now I'm out of ideas.

It's still well within warranty but I'm reluctant to return it as all my data is still on there. To be honest, there's nothing illegal or dodgy but I hate the idea of someone snooping through my personal stuff (family videos, etc).

If I return it for an exchange what will happen to the drive? Is there anything else I can try to resurrect it?

Thanks in advance.
 
Different computer? That's about the only variable left. If that doesn't work, you could try taking the drive out of the enclosure and putting it in something else.

If you do have to make use of your warranty, they'll replace your drive but they have no obligation to recover your data.
 
BlueRevolution said:
Different computer? That's about the only variable left. If that doesn't work, you could try taking the drive out of the enclosure and putting it in something else.

If you do have to make use of your warranty, they'll replace your drive but they have no obligation to recover your data.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I don't expect or want them to recover the data, I just want to be sure they don't look at it!

Would they try to fix the drive and sell it on, perhaps as a refurb? Would they erase the drive before doing so?
 
Wow, I didn't think they did refurb hard drives, but apparently so. Oooch, I wouldn't buy one of those.

Well, the only way to be absolutely certain is to physically destroy the drive yourself and buy a new one. Barring that, if you can't read the drive anywhere, you won't be able to write either, so you can't blank it.

I still suggest trying the drive in another enclosure, though. It could just be the enclosure failing.

For future reference, the only thing you get with a "For Mac" hard drive is a significantly higher price tag. Don't waste your money.
 
BlueRevolution said:
For future reference, the only thing you get with a "For Mac" hard drive is a significantly higher price tag. Don't waste your money.
Click to expand...

I agree, but I didn't pay any extra for the 'for mac' label. I only got them because Amazon had them in stock, as opposed to other 1TB drives.

Well, destroying the drive is not an option, I can't afford to replace it and it seems like a bit of a waste!


Miles - will seagate erase my data before selling it on?
 
Occasionally you hear news stories about drives being shipped out without blanking, but such occurrences are rare.

Buying used computers is another story. When I got my iBook, it had someone's bank statement sitting on the default user's desktop – and it was apparently a public computer at an elementary school before it was retired, too! Turns out it was from one of the teachers.
 
Still can't get the damn thing to mount but I did notice that it is recongnised in System Profiler.
Well, under the Firewire tab, it has my other drive and 'unknown device', I'm guessing that's the broken drive.

Does this mean anything? Does this show that the drive is fine and the enclosure is broken?

I'm getting fed up of externals dying on me. I'm half tempted to get a Drobo or something similar, so I don't have to replace the drive and enclosure every time this happens.

Any suggestions? Could i just get an external enclosure that has multiple bays? I don't need RAID or networking capabilities.

Cheers.
 
G-Tech doesn't make hard drives. They make enclosures, and the quality depends mostly on the reliability of the drive that goes inside the enclosure. It could be that they use higher-quality drives inside, but in many cases what drive goes into the enclosure depends on what happens to be cheapest at the time of manufacture. Even Apple puts various brands of hard drives into the same model of computer.

Unfortunately, there's usually no way to tell what brand of drive is inside until you get it home and plug it in. Western Digital and Seagate are the exceptions, who naturally put their own drives inside their enclosures.
 
Does your seagate contain two drives? If so, sounds like they were in a raid 0 array and one disk failed.

Best thing to do is if you can, take the drives out and connect them individually and format it.
 
dude. i just posted on here about my Seagate Xtreme 1TB.

thanks to MR i got no replies. only my USB works - the firewire worked ONCE after i turned power management off for the drive on a PC.

the drive's going back to Best Buy. i have done every possible thing to fix it and i'm going to go with the My Book with firewire
 
KettyKrueger said:
I've tried a different power cable, different FW lead, used a USB lead, reset SMC, reset PRAM and now I'm out of ideas.
Click to expand...

Man, I feel your pain. I just spent the better part of the day troubleshooting a FW400 problem on my Mac Pro. Somewhere between the PRAM, SMC reset, and removing 4 512MB memory modules I managed to fix it. I've had this problem before, seems like the Macs are pretty particular about FW.
 
milk242 said:
Does your seagate contain two drives? If so, sounds like they were in a raid 0 array and one disk failed.

Best thing to do is if you can, take the drives out and connect them individually and format it.
Click to expand...

I have 2 1TB separate external Seagate drives. Would it void the warranty to take the drive out? I'm guessing...yes!
 
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