Tech Support Forum - View Single Post - Maxtor Personal Storage 3200

ianB · 12-09-2007, 06:56 PM

Hello,

The device is a Maxtor 3200, 300 GB USB external hard drive, and still under warranty.

My drive was plugged into my laptop and fell off a table about 1 and 1/2 feet to the carpeted floor below. Now it seems like it might be dead, wanted to see if anyone has tips to a) get it working and/or b) get the data.

When I plug in the power cable, the green light comes on and I hear/feel vibrations within the case, and the PC detects the USB device but nothing more. After about 5-10 minutes all vibrations within the case stop as if the device were turned off, but the green light stays on and in windows Device Manager a yellow exclamation mark shows up with the error "the device cannot start".

Disk Management in compmgmt.msc shows the internal HDD and the CD drive, but obviously does not show the external drive.

So this piece of crap is dead, does anyone have any ninja elite HDD repair tricks?

I may end up paying Seagate to recover the data, but there are over 200 gigs that I need off the device, and 90% of it is pirated software, movies/music, and games. Is that something to worry about when sending off for recovery? How much does that sort of thing usually cost? Like I said the drive is still under warranty, so my hope is that Seagate can recover the data for a reasonable rate and ship me a new drive for free.

Thanks,
iB

12-09-2007, 06:56 PM	#1 (permalink)
ianB Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 1 OS: xp	Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 - drive dead? Hello, The device is a Maxtor 3200, 300 GB USB external hard drive, and still under warranty. My drive was plugged into my laptop and fell off a table about 1 and 1/2 feet to the carpeted floor below. Now it seems like it might be dead, wanted to see if anyone has tips to a) get it working and/or b) get the data. When I plug in the power cable, the green light comes on and I hear/feel vibrations within the case, and the PC detects the USB device but nothing more. After about 5-10 minutes all vibrations within the case stop as if the device were turned off, but the green light stays on and in windows Device Manager a yellow exclamation mark shows up with the error "the device cannot start". Disk Management in compmgmt.msc shows the internal HDD and the CD drive, but obviously does not show the external drive. So this piece of crap is dead, does anyone have any ninja elite HDD repair tricks? I may end up paying Seagate to recover the data, but there are over 200 gigs that I need off the device, and 90% of it is pirated software, movies/music, and games. Is that something to worry about when sending off for recovery? How much does that sort of thing usually cost? Like I said the drive is still under warranty, so my hope is that Seagate can recover the data for a reasonable rate and ship me a new drive for free. Thanks, iB