External Hard Drive

[justin_ator]

So I have a Seagate 1TB Backup Plus Portable external hard drive. It's been working great, etc. Never been dropped, not that old, etc.

Today I went to plug it in and noticed that instead of the solid white light that generally shows when it is connected, it was a blinking white light. My computer isn't recognizing the device as connected, and I'm not sure what the problem is or how to fix it.

I have tried all the USB ports on my computer multiple times, and it wouldn't connect to my friend's laptop at all (her computer ports are kinda bipolar though, so that may not mean anything). Going into

Start -> (rightclick Computer) -> Manage -> Storage -> Disk Management

isn't recognizing it either. I tried using her usb plug from her external with mine, and I got the same issue still.

I've read online a few places that it could have been a power supply issue, but since it's USB powered I don't see why that would become an issue all of a sudden when it was working perfectly fine yesterday. I literally have never done anything to it that could have caused it to break, so I don't really know where this came from. No updates have been applied, or anything, so I'm not really sure. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

In all honesty I would probably have just taken it back to where I got it and seen if my warranty would replace it, BUT... I have over 7000 songs and a TON of important personal files and programs on it that I can't lose... including some school stuff. I'm happy to give more info or whatever if it's needed.

[Wayward Vagabond]

Re: External Hard Drive

swap hard drive cases. it may not be the actual drive but the case its in

[justin_ator]

Re: External Hard Drive

Well I can't swap with her because it's not the same type of drive, nor the same type of case. I don't really have any other external to try switching with. I'll keep this in mind though in case nothing else works and I'm out of options.

[Wayward Vagabond]

Re: External Hard Drive

just know that if you open the case you void warranty. but since you wont even be using the warranty because of the files and stuff you have inside i dont think thats really a problem. what kind of HDD is it? you might be able to just open it up and plug it into your pc if you have one

[Tyson ultima]

Re: External Hard Drive

I have a seagate go flex 3TB HDD. Since yours is only 1TB your PC should be compatable with it. I would suggest to find instructions on opening your case. Buy yourself a couple SATA cables if you don't have one. Mount it on the inside and then your files should be on the drive... I could be wrong though since I had a 3TB hardrive and my motherboard is incapable of handling 3TB so it could only dish out 2. SO we had to erase all of the memory.

[Wayward Vagabond]

Re: External Hard Drive

well he said he was using it just yesterday so im pretty sure it wouldnt lose compatibility over night

[Tyson ultima]

Re: External Hard Drive

well he said he was using it just yesterday so im pretty sure it wouldnt lose compatibility over night

Let me state the weirdness of the goflex to be exact. I hooked it up through USB onto XP and it would work just fine and the 3TB would be recognized as a whole. THEN when I would connect it via SATA XP wouldn't recognize the drive at all. Since I run dual boot I decided to check to see if WIndows 7 recognized it and it did. Then after a bunch of searching I realized my motherboard itself can only recognize 2TB hardrives. Which again doesn't make sense since all 3TB were recognized through USB connection and not SATA.

[Wayward Vagabond]

Re: External Hard Drive

lol wtf weird. hmm well i guess there isnt much to say since i dont know about HDD and their connectivity enough to know why that is. best of luck though justin

[TC_Halogen]

Re: External Hard Drive

Just one thing to add. Tyson's solution is good enough to find out whether or not the drive is still intact. Get some SATA cables and mount the drive alongside of the drive with your system on it, making sure that the drive you want to test is mounted as a slave drive, and not the primary one.

This is as simple as changing the boot order to ensure that the drive with your Windows partition loads first; you might not need to do anything like this, but it's for safety's sake.

[justin_ator]

Re: External Hard Drive

I'm going to call the support tomorrow and see if I can't get some input from them as well. Still holding a little hope that it's not going to come down to pay for a new drive or lose all my data. Thanks for the feedback guys.