External Seagate M3 portable dead

[Thimblewad]

I just bought a Seagate M3 Portable in "Maxtor" clothing. The Drive Manager thing downloaded some sort of firmware update on my HP 250 G4 and it rebooted my PC. Next thing I know, the computer takes a lot of time to boot (it has an SSD), and I can't see the Seagate anywhere except in Diskpart (where it shows a capacity of 0 GB) and in Device Manager under "Computer → Manage".

I used the "clean" command for the drive in Diskpart and now I am unable to run "create partition primary". Diskpart gives an error about a fatal hardware fault.

In the Device Manager application tho, the drive reports to be working fine, I can see everything under the "details" tab.

What do i do?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Search the seagate website and see if they have proper firmware for the m3. Failing that, contact seagate directly and see if they can help. If they cant then just return it to the olace you bought it for another one

 

[Thimblewad]

I can't find any firmware on their website. Samsung Drive Manager doesn't find the drive.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Test the drive by hooking it up to another pc if problem still persists then send it back to the retailer for a replacement. You said you just bought it after all. You should be able to return it under warranty

 

[Thimblewad]

I hooked it up in 5 PCs, nothing. I filled out the RMA form and I'm sending it back tomorrow. Thanks for the help.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey, @Thimblewad!

This issue sounds pretty concerning! I hope you didn't have any important files on the external drive that were not backed up. Fatal hardware fault/failure usually indicates that the issue is physical and there's almost nothing you can do to fix the drive itself.
When dealing with external drive issue, always try connecting it with different USB cables and to multiple computers. This could easily help you determine where the source of the problem is. I'd also strongly recommend to keep backup of your files on at least two different locations. Moving data from your system drive to an external HDD is not a backup, unless there is already a duplicate of the file on a different storage. I'd also suggest you keep un eye on your storage devices every once in awhile, using their brand-specific diagnostic tools. This way you will be able to monitor their health and SMART status and, hopefully, not lose any important data.

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Thimblewad]

I actually bought the drive to make backups. My dad has a laptop with a 120 GB SSD and he needs storage to back things up. I have already split the drive into two partitons to separate the OS from the files he's using, if sometime a Windows reinstallation is required, but if the drive dies, he loses everything. The most sensitive of data in stored od DVDs and placed in a box, not to be touched until the backup has to be used, just to keep the DVDs intact.

As for the backing up with the external drive: I was planning on putting about 50 GBs of backup data on it, just so that it's easier to get to it. He would then be able to use the rest of the disk for movies, music etc.

Off-topic but still:
Let's say I have my way around storage, even though I haven't got much money, I made myself a nice little setup for my PC (not RAID-ing because no money ). I'm using a 120 GB SSD for the OS and other things, 500 GB disk for torrenting and web downloads (whoops) and everything else (music, games etc.) on a 1 TB drive, which also holds a week old system backup. All drives have a single partition which takes up the whole disk (except the system one, which has an extra boot partition (500 MB))) For example: I installed Mafia 3 yesterday, which took 10 minutes (average data rate was 75/72 of read/write speeds from the 500 GB disk to the 1 TB disk, so I guess that's pretty good).