So I have a Fantom Drives 160GB Titanium external drive and it has been sitting unused for awhile. I have need of it again and it won’t spin up. Initially the drive didn’t seem like it had even turned on but after leaving it sit, trying a couple of things to try and find the drive I started getting the flashing blue led that typically indicates the drive is working. However I can’t see the drive and it still doesn’t seem to be spinning (which of course would explain why it isn’t showing up in Windows Explorer.)
The drive is cold to the touch but being metal cased that doesn’t seem odd. It isn’t in a particularly cold spot, around 65deg F but I’m going to move it to a warmer spot anyway.
So any experience with a similar problem out there? Any ideas? Do hard drives just ‘go bad’ from sitting? Could the drive be stuck in some sort of hibernation mode?
Something similar happened to my computer at work and it turned out that the problem was that there was a lot of accumulated dust. Our IT guy actually blew out the dust using an air compressor and lo and behold my computer worked fine.
Some of the sectors are corrupted perhaps. Can you defrag it using windows?
Also you can try to export the files on an external drive and see if they are good?
@Imperious:
Some of the sectors are corrupted perhaps. Can you defrag it using windows?
Also you can try to export the files on an external drive and see if they are good?
There isn’t anything on it I need as far as the files go. I was using it for backups and I got sloppy, lazy, busy et al about it so no big deal in that regard. I haven’t been doing much ‘work’ on my PC so the external drive has just sat. I have a couple of financial sheets I’ve been using but I’ve just backed those up to a flash drive instead of running full system backups.
I’m changing the hard drive in my PS3 so I needed this one to backup the PS3 so I can copy the files to the new drive. But as I have an external enclosure coming to put the old PS3 drive in and enough space on the girlfriends PC, I can work around not having this drive with regards the swap.
I can’t seem to find/see the drive via any of the usual means or even a DOS command prompt despite it appearing to be on. I must have jolted it or not turned it off properly the last time I used it I guess.
@Brain:
Something similar happened to my computer at work and it turned out that the problem was that there was a lot of accumulated dust. Our IT guy actually blew out the dust using an air compressor and lo and behold my computer worked fine.
Hadn’t thought of that. It is certainly worth a shot.
Is this USB?
Are you using it with the same system you used to?
Could be a lot of things. Sounds more like a power issue. Try a different USB port, or USB cable. I’ve had systems that would not operate USB peripherals from the front ports but would from the back. If you have other USB items that are working fine, try using that port. Potentially could be a driver issue. Try another computer as well. We want to eliminate the possibility that it is the driver, port, cable, HD that has the issue.
You could also open the case and try to mount it internally and see if that changes anything.
Is this USB?
Are you using it with the same system you used to?Could be a lot of things. Sounds more like a power issue. Try a different USB port, or USB cable. I’ve had systems that would not operate USB peripherals from the front ports but would from the back. If you have other USB items that are working fine, try using that port. Potentially could be a driver issue. Try another computer as well. We want to eliminate the possibility that it is the driver, port, cable, HD that has the issue.
You could also open the case and try to mount it internally and see if that changes anything.
Same system (laptop) as previously used on and the USB ports are good at the PC as other USB devices (wireless mouse, flash drives) are working in them. This does not rule out the USB cable as bad and I have one I can borrow for the weekend so I’ll try that too.
The external drive has an AC adaptor so I don’t think power is the issue.
I did not try plugging it into another computer.
I could not find this – http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools – last night having come upon this at more or less bedtime so I was a bit done. I was going to re-format the drive to FAT32 overnight so I could do the backup of the PS3 tonight and the drive swap tomorrow morning.
I’m hoping it is some sort of software issue with the drive and not a mechanical failure. I’ll try the Seagate programs and see what happens.
I’m not out any data for losing the drive just the hardware but having it would have allowed me to put off getting an additional drive for a bit of time yet.
Did you ever get that hard drive fixed?
@Brain:
Did you ever get that hard drive fixed?
Nope. Only out the hardware though so it certainly ‘could have been worse.’ I ended up adding a 1TB drive to my system.
@Brain:
Did you ever get that hard drive fixed?
Nope. Only out the hardware though so it certainly ‘could have been worse.’ I ended up adding a 1TB drive to my system.
It will take you years to fill that up with por…I mean WW2 plane nose art. :-D
It is pretty big. I really don’t think I need the whole TB but it was on sale and I had $25 bucks in rewards certs from Best Buy so it was pretty cheap compared to even the other 1TB drives and per gig cheaper than the 500GB drives.
I’m still kind of having trouble wrapping my head around it really. I remember my Dad bringing home those giant serving platter sized ‘floppies’ that were something like 16KB.
I’m still a little freaked by my 30GB iPod with video.
