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External harddrive malfunction

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by silverchair_92

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I recently bought myself an external drive (Seagate FreeAgent) which has been working perfectly for the first few weeks.
It seems something went wrong and now I can't access the files on the drive. My computer on startup sometimes can't find the drive at all, sometimes it does but then it tells me it's "unavailable". Sometimes it works for a few minutes and then pops up the message that "writing failed" and I loose contact again.
I have a PC and using Windows XP, if anyone knows whats wrong or has any idea I'd be happy for some tips!

5 replies

by techrepublic

did you ever find a solution? really don't want to reformat. shows 1 mg free

by thumbsup2

... restarting the computer without the external drive plugged in to it but powered on. Once Windows loads, plug in the USB cord.

by matt

I would guess that it is a physical malfunction with the drive, the fact that the problem is intermitant would point to this. worse case is that the internal drive is screwed and you could if you wished salvage the sata to usb/firewire controler and use it with another drive.

hope this helps

by oharaphil

i had the same problem with my seagate external drive ,it turned out to be an issue with the USB cable that came with the drive ,have you tried a different USB cable?

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