Help my seagate externalhard disc has just crashed

[donoreo]

Speaking of failed hard drives, I just sent the 5th and 6th drives since June back to Western Digital here at work. All drives were less than 2 years old.

[F11]

Once again thanks guys for all your helpful advice. I've given the harddrive now to my son-in-law who has an IT background and I think he is going to see if it is the Caddie (think that is right). You will never also believe what has happened. I sent a couple of my landscape shots off to the Sun Newspaper as they are going to print some landscapes and I've had an e.mail to say one of mine has been shortlisted but alas if they want the bigger file sized original I'm stuffed if the whole thing has crashed. Why do these things happen at such a time? Everything was working fine last Friday. I know I am at fault to a certain extent by not systematically backing up the important images but its no good crying over spilt milk. (Not that I don't feel like crying). I'll let everyone know whether the news is good or bad when I've had a diagnosis.

[F11]

This is not good donoreo - nothing at all seems reliable any more. I thought also that some of these external hard drives had a life time guarantee!! Rubbish isn't it

[Ordessa]

Originally Posted by F11

I've had a Seagate External hard drive for quite a time now with lots of my best shots saved on it. Tonight however, the whole thing has just crashed for no apparent reason, not loading at all on to the computer. Has anyone ever paid to get the information restored. If so, what's the average cost. I'm gutted as my son-in-law did advise me to copy some of my best images on to discs but time prevailing I haven't heeded his words of wisdom.

When you say "crashed"...what do you mean - does it spin up ? any lights... or just errors
On the Segate website there are some SEATOOLS utilities that can help you diagnose the issue..

happy to try and help you if you are in the UK ...

[KeithT]

Well F11. It's a hard lesson to learn. You must get into the habit of backing up your best keepers if none of the others. It really is worth having two external harddrives, one for the stuff and the other to back-up to. Also doesn't hurt to put your raw keepers on disc and file them away in the dark for those 'just-incase' times. I bet you will from now on! Oh, they do have a lifetime guarantee. The problem is to determine what the mean by lifetime, and if they fail you may get another drive, but you have still lost your piccies. Back-up is the only answer if you don't want a migraine trying to recover them.

[donoreo]

I never mentioned two things: the WD drives I have sent back are their "green" line. We have some WD "Black" models and they have been solid. They are supposed to be server grade drives. Myself I have a dLink DNS-323 NAS box with two mirrored Seagate ES.2 (server grade) drives in it. If the house burns down, I grab it on the way out.