My partner Lorraine has a two year old Seagate portable USB platter hard drive with all her MA art work on it. Whilst making a copy, it came up ‘no longer recognised’ and began emitting a soft regular beep (failure notice). Seagate say its out of warranty, so refuse support.
Interestingly I bought two of these and this is the second one that has failed (the first within warranty). Make of that what you will.
Regardless, any help would be hugely appreciated.
Data recovery by a reputable firm dealing with digital forensics would be the surest way. I used that a few years ago - it wasn’t hugely expensive.
What are you using? Windows, Linux, Mac? Any updates? Anything newly installed since it was last used? Mac can throw that kind of not recognised I find. A non Mac system with file system compatibility often works I’ve found. But general rule of thumb is not mess around with it at all if you aren’t sure - it can make things worse and much harder and more expensive.
ETA, yes, avoid Seagate - I’ve had those fail, so it may well need digital forensics. The Seagate recovery tools seem to be designed to make you have to buy a new drive. WD have been reliable I’ve found.
Thanks Dan. I’m coming around to the idea of approaching a reputable firm.
I use Arch Linux mainly, together with other Linux flavours. I have been known to resort to Windows for apps that are specific to that OS. Sadly, the drive is not showing, whatever I attach it to.
To be fair, Seagate did recover the data from the first one that failed, as it was considered under warranty. They took a while to turn it around. I will say, I have lost faith in the brand as they don’t even have an out of warranty service!
As I am new to this, you don’t have any recommendations as to who are reputable recovery specialists? Sorry to have to ask.
I used an outfit in Auckland New Zealand which is where I was at the time. I don’t have any experience in London. I’d be looking for something like the link below. Cost might be £140 inc. VAT. - I’d expect around that to £300 or so. If doing a search, Google < digital forensics data recovery >. Maybe add words like audit or engineering and go to 4th - 6th or so down the list rather than flashiest advertiser. Obviously avoid shady outfits or ‘tech freaks’, ‘drive hackers’ etc. If they are established providers of services for legal cases, they will have suitable data protection and standards. Hard drives can have passwords, personal info etc.
It’s a really horrible experience, but the ability to recover data off drives is really extraordinary. Hope this one will be easy.