Help with older Seagate External HD

[WartHog]

Grabbed a older Seagate External HD from the Thrift Store I'm working at that was getting tossed into eWaste. Hooked it up to my Win 10 laptop at home and can't access the drive. Get message "Location is not available. F:\ is not accessible. Access is denied.

This is the HD - http://www.memory4less.com/seagate-e...ive-9bd858-560

[d33pt]

Look at Disk Management and see if you can delete and recreate the partition, then format it. Who knows what it was formatted for.

[WartHog]

If I can/do that, any data on the drive will be erased, correct? I was hoping it might be full of good Classic Rock MP3's.

[AreWeFree]

lmao thrift store hard drive failure

can't believe an honest person even want to hook that up to their system, you must be in dire need.
use gparted to create a mbr if you can't access it through windows disk management, then use smart utilities to check for reallocated sector counts and pending sectors, then good luck.

[stilly]

If I can/do that, any data on the drive will be erased, correct? I was hoping it might be full of good Classic Rock MP3's.

Imagine data being like vehicles and a hard drive being like a parking lot with a storage shed.

When you have a file, you park it on the parking lot, each parking space can hold ONE data file, or a part of a data file, but it may NOT hold TWO types of data in it, so if you have a data truck (larger file) and it needs 3.5 spaces, it takes it, then if you have a data jackass car that needs .3 data spaces, it will park in the next available spot, and never the two shall meet.

When you REFORMAT or DELETE the partitions, what you effectively do is remove all of the striping on that lot and as a result, the data is still there, but just not parking in a lot so you know where it is. In order for you to retrieve data, you must tell the parking lot master (Windows) what section your data is in. Then it goes and gets it, but there is no way to communicate with it to tell it to get that truck data that was there last night but now is not there because it was reformatted on... Your only options are A, B, C, Etc. parking lot spaces...

So you then need a program that will run out and look around and find ALL of the data vehicles it can find and come back and tell you where it has them stored temporarily until you retrieve them and park them onto another parking lot...

Does that make better sense? So if you WIPE out the partitions, no need to worry, you can run a data recovery program and manually scan the entire parking lot, striped or not looking for ANY possible data vehicle. Then when you find it, you say yes and it parks it into a space that can be accessed by you with no special software later on.

My advice to you, load up a data recovery program, put the drive in a cradle and then scan it if you want to go prospecting...

I ONCE bought a "NEW" hard drive from an ebay seller and when I plugged it in to format it, it said that I was about to delete the partitions and they might contain data. I was like what? So I had a closer look and there was a partition named "Windows" on the drive and I was like WHAT? so I had a closer look...

Next thing you know FBI contractors and Lawful telecommunications interception memos and photos, LOTS of photos were uncovered before my eyes... Over a million files got FOUND from a data recovery program.And because I am who I am with my highly visible abs and 6" AMG brakes, I was able to find out who exactly it belonged to. AND I also got to scare some of his co-workers... In VIRGINIA... That is the SHORT version of the story.

[WartHog]

Thanks, guys. Sounds like the smartest thing to do is take it out to my buddy's property on my next shooting session and sacrifice it to the Buckshot Gods...

[the86d]

I would try to carve data from it 1st with photorec, for fun, THEN make it usable for your storage needs...

[WilcoTangoFoxtrot]

Never plug a device of unknown origin into your device. Fried hardware and stolen/corrupted data is a thing.

And, those public usb charging ports? Avoid. Use a charging pack as an intermediary. Carry usb cables that are charging only in case you get desperate for the juice.

[yellowsulphur]

A quick way to see if there is anything on the disk. Windows search > cmd > run as administrator > diskpart > list disk > select disk (X) > list partition. Diskpart is more powerful than disk management and can see things that otherwise might be missed.

[stilly]

Thanks, guys. Sounds like the smartest thing to do is take it out to my buddy's property on my next shooting session and sacrifice it to the Buckshot Gods...

Why does THAT sound like the best thing? I did not hear that anywhere. You still have PLENTY of options.

You can go buy another internal drive and swap it into the case. There are all sorts of things you can do. Shoot it? WHY? Tweak it open and grab the magnets out of it first. Then use the platters to hang in your trees to scare the birds away.

I am not convinced it is messed up though, not totally anyways, Grab Hirens 15.2 and run a seagate disk checked on it and see if it passes SMART testing. If it does then you can still do something with it. It might just have a corrupted FAT or partition. Once you fix them it will be good to go.

I would try to carve data from it 1st with photorec, for fun, THEN make it usable for your storage needs...

Yes, on a foreign drive, NOTHING is more important to a snooper than the photos/movies and maybe documents...

[Skip_Dog]

Yes, on a foreign drive, NOTHING is more important to a snooper than the photos/movies and maybe documents...

And this is the reason I put a .45 into each and everyone of my companies old HDs

[Michael in California]

I bought two external HDD from an estate sale of a local photographer.

In and among the normal chearleader pics and such was a bunch of cougar pics that shouldn't be published. Nothing that wouldn't make a mild version of playboy though. He was wheelchair bound, so I guess this was his way to get his jollies. There were no unsavory teen pics, so perhaps he had some integrity.

Both drives are have happily been backup drives for a few years.

FWIW: I booted a linux liveCD for initial checkout.

[JDay]

You just need to take ownership of the partition. Google it.

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