My parents transferred their wedding videos from VHS to an HDD around ten years ago using a Seagate portable drive (SRD00F1), but now it's acting up. It started beeping, which I suspected was due to the disk heads not docking properly, so I opened it up to check. The heads looked fine, but now it doesn't beep anymore. Instead, I hear a faint scratching sound when I plug it in, and it doesn't show up on the device list. I'm hoping someone can help me figure this out!
3 Answers
It sounds like you may have made things worse by opening the drive. HDDs are super sensitive to dust and handling. If you touched the inside, you're likely going to need professional help to get your data back, and it can be quite costly!
Just to clarify, did you open the exterior shell or the drive itself? If it’s the latter, unfortunately, you're probably looking at a difficult recovery situation now.
Yeah, I messed up. I opened the inner shell. Now I'm stuck.
Definitely leave it to professionals next time. This post serves as a solid reminder for anyone thinking about opening their HDD without being 100% sure!
I totally get it. It’s a tough lesson to learn, but yeah, for future reference, always leave the inner workings to the pros unless you really know what you’re doing.