Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 - drive dead?

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

Mafelix · 12-29-2007, 06:51 PM

The drive sound like it may be dead, Ive had 3 Maxtor drive and they are useless at the best of times, yet alone when dropped. I don't like your chances of getting a replacement drive as I had to fight to get a 6month old drive that failed for no apparent reason, replaced because I wouldn't pay Maxtor the quoted $2000 to recover a 300Gig drive. Instead I took it to my local computer guy who recovered it free of charge. I then went to get a replacement drive under warranty and Maxtor didn't like that I got a non maxtor employee to recover the drive and refused to replace it. I had to fight for 12month and force them into replacing it. (forcing them by exposing them online through a webpage)

My advice is if its just an external drive (not a shared network drive) remove the internal drive replace it with a decent (IDE - this is what the drives use) 500gig (avoid maxtor dives) drive and count your losses. you could try running a drive recovery program by connecting the Maxtor drive to your pc and running programs such as r-studio but if its not spinning up its a good chance your data gone to cyberheaven.

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

12-29-2007, 06:51 PM	#2 (permalink)
Mafelix Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 31 OS: Win98, ME, 2000, Xp Pro, Vista, Suse and Knoppix (linux)	Re: Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 - drive dead? The drive sound like it may be dead, Ive had 3 Maxtor drive and they are useless at the best of times, yet alone when dropped. I don't like your chances of getting a replacement drive as I had to fight to get a 6month old drive that failed for no apparent reason, replaced because I wouldn't pay Maxtor the quoted $2000 to recover a 300Gig drive. Instead I took it to my local computer guy who recovered it free of charge. I then went to get a replacement drive under warranty and Maxtor didn't like that I got a non maxtor employee to recover the drive and refused to replace it. I had to fight for 12month and force them into replacing it. (forcing them by exposing them online through a webpage) My advice is if its just an external drive (not a shared network drive) remove the internal drive replace it with a decent (IDE - this is what the drives use) 500gig (avoid maxtor dives) drive and count your losses. you could try running a drive recovery program by connecting the Maxtor drive to your pc and running programs such as r-studio but if its not spinning up its a good chance your data gone to cyberheaven.