Crap, my external is acting up!

[Travis]

I have a Seagate external hard drive with 1.5 terrabytes. I have about 350 gigs on it right now and all of a sudden my computer won't recognize the partitions that I have in it and wants to reformat it!


Damn! I'm gonna lose everything aren't I?

Crap!

 

[Travis]

Hmmm, unplugged it for a few hours and new it seems to be detecting it again. Weird.

 

[Zax63]

Backup anything vital on it ASAP. You never know if it will go away again.

 

[shadron]

A well known way to bring a dying drive back to life is to stick it in the fridge for a while. Do it only so you can back up the contents, 'cause it won' last.

 

[negativ]

Another possibility is that the drive is trying to go into low-power mode after having been idle for a set amount of time, and odd things are happening. I have a Hitachi external that started acting all sorts of crazy after I started using 64-bit Vista. I finally figured out that it wasn't happy with Vista's USB selective suspend feature. The trouble went away after I disabled that in the Vista advanced power saving options.

Of course, this may not apply to your situation at all.

 

[Ernie M]

You have a Seagate hard drive?

That could be the problem.

Seagate had "Intuitionist" Laura Day run a workshop.

Here's an excerpt from a Newsweek article, The $10,00-a-month-psychic

When Seagate Technology, the $11 billion-a-year maker of hard drives for the Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox, went searching for a consultant to run one of its management workshops in the fall of 2006, it bypassed the usual list of Silicon Valley gurus. Instead, Seagate's executive director of software engineering, Gabriel Lawson, invited Laura Day—a stylish New Yorker with no tech experience—to train his Colorado-based team. "She was amazing," Lawson tells NEWSWEEK, recalling Day's quick insights into the poor coordination between the company's research and marketing teams. "Anybody who can afford her will get 100 times their money's worth." What exactly is Day's expertise? While she likes to downplay it as mere "intuition," her clients prefer another explanation: she's a psychic.

Seagate should spend it's money rationally on the design and construction of it's products instead of squandering it on a scam. Perhaps then you'd have a more reliable external hard drive.

 

[Travis]

I think it might have been the fact that I had it running for like 6 days straight. It probably overheated.

 

[Pidge]

If the model of the HDD is ST31500341AS, you should look at this:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207957

 

[Ernie M]

Why wouldn't you hire "Intuitive" Laura Day at $10,000-a-month and see what she thinks might be the problem with your Seagate hard drive?

Seagate had her run one of their workshops, and besides, Seagate's Senior Executive Director of Software Engineering said:

"Anybody who can afford her will get 100 times their money's worth."

So if you hired Laura Day at $10,000 for just one month, you should see a return on your "investment" of $1,000,000. For example:
$1,000,000 = $10,000 one month of Laura's "intuition" x "100 times your money's worth"

You could buy a lot of external hard drives for that much.

 

[Travis]

If the model of the HDD is ST31500341AS, you should look at this:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207957

Mine appears to be a different model.

Why wouldn't you hire "Intuitive" Laura Day at $10,000-a-month and see what she thinks might be the problem with your Seagate hard drive?

Seagate had her run one of their workshops, and besides, Seagate's Senior Executive Director of Software Engineering said:



So if you hired Laura Day at $10,000 for just one month, you should see a return on your "investment" of $1,000,000. For example:
$1,000,000 = $10,000 one month of Laura's "intuition" x "100 times your money's worth"

You could buy a lot of external hard drives for that much.

Well, lots of companies blow a lot of money on useless things like anger management and "team building" workshops. It appears that Seagate just got one run by a psychic.

 

[Ernie M]

Hi Travis,

While I'm not sure which model Seagate external hd you have, here's a link where you can read the "Cons" under the "Customer Reviews," and see if this sounds like what happened to your hard drive.

I know companies spend money for things which I consider wasteful and useless, such as paying for "psychic" or "intuitive" advice.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I think it might have been the fact that I had it running for like 6 days straight. It probably overheated.

That shouldn't be an issue, unless the drive was defective to begin with.

 

[MetalPig]

So if you hired Laura Day at $10,000 for just one month, you should see a return on your "investment" of $1,000,000. For example:
$1,000,000 = $10,000 one month of Laura's "intuition" x "100 times your money's worth"

No, no. 10,000 is what you'd pay, not what Laura's visit is actually worth.
100 times nothing is still nothing.

 

[Ernie M]

No, no. 10,000 is what you'd pay, not what Laura's visit is actually worth.
100 times nothing is still nothing.

Oh, you are so right!!!

 

[ElMondoHummus]

Backup anything vital on it ASAP. You never know if it will go away again.

A well known way to bring a dying drive back to life is to stick it in the fridge for a while. Do it only so you can back up the contents, 'cause it won' last.

YES!!! The fact that the drive doesn't recognize could be the first sign of imminent failure. Seriously, back stuff up.

 

[vexed]

I have a Seagate external hard drive with 1.5 terrabytes. I have about 350 gigs on it right now and all of a sudden my computer won't recognize the partitions that I have in it and wants to reformat it!


Damn! I'm gonna lose everything aren't I?

Crap!

You could try running Spinrite on it.