Storage Solutions Seagate External Desktop Drive 1TB - My experience

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y2jamit

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Hi Folks,

I had purchased Seagate External Desktop Drive 1TB ST310005EXM101-RK on 25/12/2009 from Othree systems & solutions in Lamington Road. This drive is USB 2.0 which needs to be powered by an external adapter. The drive was working fine until 09/01/2010. I have a 250GB external WD 2.5 inches hard drive as well. I was running out of space on that one and hence decided to buy Seagate as it was comparatively cheaper. Unfortunately the Seagate drive is not working anymore.

When I connected the drive to my PC on 09/01/2010, it was not recognized on my PC. The LED indicator showed a green status but this was not blinking as is the case when it is running fine. Also I could hear soft beep sounds as well. I tried various USB ports & different USB cables but to no avail. Now when I try connecting the drive, it gives me a clicking sound to begin with and later on it settles to an usual spinning sound.

I called up Othree to get the seagate service center number. I must add these guys have a pathetic after sales service. The guys I spoke with from Othree on the phone were least interested and somehow I got the Seagate number from them which is 18004254535. I called on that number and got the Accel Frontline numbers 40993098/99. Called up Accel and spoke with a lady who informed that there is no repairing option at their center and the product will have to be replaced. Now I have my entire movie collection on that drive which comes to around 100-150 GB. I cannot just give up my collection. She said that I have to get permission from seagate for external data recovery. The email address is india_cso@accelfrontline.in. I emailed them and gave an account of the situation. I got a reply very soon informing me that I will have to do my data recovery at my own expense and they would require a written confirmation from that company on their letterhead along with the printout of that email. Once this is done, I can get my product replaced from their Accel center provided there is no physical damage.

Guys, to be frank I`am really regretting buying this product in the first place.:frusty::frusty::frusty: Seagate is a reputed company with so many years in the market but it is quite disappointing to know that they do not have any tech support for their hard drives and do not offer data recovery as well. Also I noted that the email from Accel informed me that my warranty is until 26/05/2011 but I got my product on 25/12/2009 so with 2 years warranty, it should be 25/12/2011. I have sent them an email asking for a clarification. I have also asked them if a 3rd party opens the casing, will it be ok under their warranty or not.

Folks, at this moment I`am in a Limbo. Can anyone suggest me a place near Goregaon, Mumbai which can provide me with an efficient & affordable data recovery ?:S Also is there anything which I can try to get the drive working ? I feel that the drive is functional but it gives a clicking sound when it is powered on initially and then settles down. Any input would be grately appreciated.:anyone:
 
1) Relax. Hard drive failures happen. That is why it is good to have backups, in multiples. Buy optical media for backups, it is not too expensive and may just be more VFM.

2) A collection of movies can be rebuilt. And easily.

3) Data recovery is a b**ch. It is expensive, no guarantees, and a long drawn process. It usually is better to avoid it. If they goof up with your device, then your warranty is gone too.

4) Replacement is far better than repair. Get a spanking new external drive for your old one.

5) The warranty goof-up is the only issue I would be worried about. Get in touch with whoever is responsible for that and get it rectified in their records.

6) Do not let any 3rd party operator, or even yourself, open that casing! That will void the warranty immediately. There is a reason for all those letterhead requirements and recovery restrictions, and the company wants to make sure that you go only to qualified data recovery professionals. Otherwise, and think about this, why should any company give you a free replacement for your hard drive that someone might have bashed, broken or abused just out of lack of expertise.
 
Welcome to TE, they are many mistakes from your side, blaming it on the company is not going to help

1. You should have been aware while buying External HDD that opening the case will void warranty
2. No product company provides data recovery in India, since Seagate/WD/Transcend offers replacement and not repair, and that too sent to some location outside India and get the replacement
for eg: Seagate drives go to Singapore
3. Datarecovery is done by professional groups or using some homebrew methods, recovery is not 100% guarenteed
4. You should have been careful to have an other backup of this critical data somewhere else
 
Please format that first post of yours so it's readable and please leave the font color to normal - it hurts! If you assume someone's going to help you urgently due to that nasty formatting you've done, you're mistaken!
 
Hi welcome to TE.

I agree with what phoenix and Spectre have mentioned but I would also suggest you to try the following

1) Try plugging in the external drive to some other config. It might work and in case if it gets detected you can take a backup and send the drive for replacement. This has happened with my Seagate external drive a couple of times (i.e not detecting on my pc but did on my friends pc)

2) Secondly try a spare power adapter from another external drive. It might be that the adapter is faulty and not providing enough power.

If all fails, your best bet is to get it replaced and with the money you save on data recovery (professional data recovery is really very costly) buy a good net connection and rebuild your movie collection withing days ;)

Hope this helps.
 
My only advice to Movie/Music collectors is if you cannot have a backup of the Data at least have list of the contents stores in a File so that you know what you lost.

A simple DOS command such as "dir /s > c:\list.txt" will make create a file called List.txt with the list of all Files and Folders. You can schedule this to run every day. Most Music and Movies can easily be re downloaded in a matter of days or collected from friends.
 
Thank you all for your fabulous replies. Damn I`am so glad to be part of such a wonderful forum where there are so many helpful people.:hap2:

@phoenix844884, I totally agree with you. Data recovery feels like an upstream process to me. I had a big movie collection as I mentioned It was about 100-150 GB. I have a WD 250 GB external HDD and my internal HDD is about 160 GB. As I mentioned earlier I was running out of space on my WD & my internal HDD also has other videos and music. So I chose to buy the 1TB HDD. I know that I can rebuild my entire movie collection but my main concern is what will happen to my data ? What will happen to the drive after its sent for a replacement. To be honest, the entire collection is not legit. So this is bothering me a bit.:rofl::P:rofl:. Hence I was looking for an inexpensive recovery. I also emailed Accel about the warranty. They replied saying that I have to sort the warranty with my point of purchase. Also they confirmed that a 3rd party can open up the casing and this will not void the warranty.

@Spectre I don`t know why anyone would like to have backup of a backup for your movie collection. Now lets say if I continue to use my HDD and the data goes up close to 1TB, how can I take another backup. I agree that critical data may be double backed up but I don`t think most people would like to double backup something like movies.

@Gannu I have changed the text color of my original post. Also I never spoke about any formatting mate.

@ranjitpai I have still not tried my HDD on some other PC but I can tell you that the HDD gives those clicking noises even before I connect it to the PC when the power is turned on. I can try to get a similar power adapter from my friend and see if that helps. It is quite unbelievable how a new spanking drive can go bust so soon.

Anyway thanks for all your help folks. Looking forward to more inputs. All I`am looking for is peace of mind.:angel:

@spacenoxx, that is a good idea. I will consider this in the future. Man, wouldn't it be nice If this drive could work just one more time so that I can backup my entire data.:P:D:P
 
The clicking sound is because the head has been damaged and hence the drive is not being detected. Give it another shot on some other PC.

Also I have given my HDD's for replacement a lot of times with a lot of data on it, I do not think they bother to look into the data, they might just be running some diagnostics on the HDD and determine if it needs repairing or replacement.

@spacenoxx : Nice idea. There are some cataloging software which catalog your media files and can give a printout of the same or store it in a file.
 
I have 3x 1TB Drives. All my Music and Movie collection is spread among them. Only 1 copy of it. However my Personal stuff is folder called personal which is mirrored among all 3 drives along with complete File list of all 3 drives. Even if any 2 drives fail my Personal and important stuff like Photos are still recoverable. Movies and Music I can always download :-)
 
y2jamit said:


@Spectre I don`t know why anyone would like to have backup of a backup for your movie collection. Now lets say if I continue to use my HDD and the data goes up close to 1TB, how can I take another backup. I agree that critical data may be double backed up but I don`t think most people would like to double backup something like movies.
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Its how you view a movie dump, If its not critical for you and it can be easily re-obtained, then don't bother having another backup

I was talking about critical data, for some movie dumps are critical (say for movie buffs without good internet)

The point i am making is, any of these drives can fail anytime(be it external/internal), its a trade-off we do for easy access and storage compared to an optical media

You can burn everything on DVD, so that you dont lose everything at one stretch, but the manual effort required to maintain it is just too much and also the cost factor

If its critical data (whatver be it) its always good to have a backup, since there is 0.0001% chance of both backup media to fail at same time
 
@spacenoxx : You have some innovative ideas for personal data backup. I prefer the online storage solution for backup of my personal photos and documents though. Nice tips though.

I wanted to clear one thing though .. is it true that with larger capacity drives the failure rate is more if the drive is being accessed frequently for a long time continuously for say when large chunks of data being transferred from one drive to another at high transfer rates.

A typical situation would be when you are trying to copy movies etc from a friends HDD.
 
Hi guys. Thanks again for all your replies. I have a friend who has the exact HDD which I have if I`am not mistaken. I have asked for his power adapter. I should get that tomorrow, so I will give this drive another shot tomorrow. I will definitely keep you all updated. I`am still not sure about the warranty part though as Seagate have informed that the warranty expires on 26/05/2011 when I had purchased my drive on 25/12/2009 so it should ideally be 25/12/2011. They have asked me to contact the vendor. Can any of you guys shed some light on this matter as well?
 
y2jamit said:
Hi guys. Thanks again for all your replies. I have a friend who has the exact HDD which I have if I`am not mistaken. I have asked for his power adapter. I should get that tomorrow, so I will give this drive another shot tomorrow. I will definitely keep you all updated. I`am still not sure about the warranty part though as Seagate have informed that the warranty expires on 26/05/2011 when I had purchased my drive on 25/12/2009 so it should ideally be 25/12/2011. They have asked me to contact the vendor. Can any of you guys shed some light on this matter as well?
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quite a few products are given warranty from the month of manufacture rather than the date of sale.

i guess as seagate does not require billl for warranty, they can not know when the dirve was sold. so they will simply count it as from month of manufacture.

my seagate 1 tb(5 year warranty waala) was purchased in october 09 and it shows warranty till august 14. so there also there is a discrepancy of one month
 
Yeah its from the date of manufacturing. Seagate have no way to track when the product is sold, they track it through the serial no on the HDD. Should have checked while buying itself.
 
Western Digital offers the facility to update the warranty based on your date of purchase, you just need to send them the copy of the invoice. Check with seagate if they have an option like that.
 
Ok guys. I have another update. I got my friends adapter but unfortunately it made no difference. Same clicking sound when the power is turned on and then the spinning sound:( I will try to connect the drive on another PC. Damn if the drive could just be detected once, I would be so happy. I`am really not bothered about the warranty goof up. Next time I`am gonna buy any product I know exactly how to be ready for it. That is the positive aspect which I can take form this debacle. I guess I should also stop looking at saving a bit of money and focus on the best points of anything which I`am buying. Surely now I`am not going to make money a criteria.:no::no::no:
 
Hey guys. My assembler & me watched a you tube video and opened the casing using a screwdriver. Then he took out the hard drive from the casing and connected it externally to my PC but it still gave the clicking sound. My assembler tried his hard drive on the same casing and his drive got detected. So definitely the hard drive was at fault. He informed me that if I now want a data recovery, this hard drive will have to opened and this will be a very expensive procedure. Hence I decided against it.

I went to the Seacare centre with a copy of the email from them & a letter from my assembler on his company letterhead. I have finally given up any thoughts on data recovery & I have given the hard drive for a replacement.;)
 
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