GAR.

I have an Iomega 1TB eSATA, firewire, USB, external hard drive and i think its dead. Its about a year old and i rarely use it. I normally back up files to it and then power it off. Its been on maybe 10 hours its entire life.

Today i went to power it up and it just clicks like crazy, rather loudly unlike normal chatter. Its like its trying to spin up but can't get going. I tried reseating all the connections and power. tried firewire and USB. same thing.

Any ideas here? Whats the freezer trick all about? Should i hit this sucker with a hammer? Should ijust leave it on clicking like crazy for awhile to see if it'll work itself out? I'm not happy about this at all, i have ALL my shit on this harddrive because i'm cleaning up my main computer to sell!

This is the drive: http://go.iomega.com/en-us/products/external-hard-drive-desktop/ultramax-minimax/ultramax-single/?partner=4760#overviewItem_tab


[Edited on March 5, 2011 at 1:58 PM. Reason : rerr]

3/5/2011 1:55:19 PM

Is it under warranty? If so, send it in.

3/5/2011 2:02:56 PM

i checked the serial number and they claim its not under warranty even though its a year old and it should have a 3 year warranty. it does say though that you need to register the product to get the warranty which i didnt do. so i just registered it. it still shows no warranty, but maybe it'll update in a bit. otherwise i'll have to email in a proof of purchase w/ date.

3/5/2011 2:13:57 PM

Quote :

" If you are unable to provide a dated receipt, the manufacturer may use the serial number to determine the date the product was shipped to the retailer, and use that date to determine the start of the warranty period."

from: http://warrantywisdom.com/learn/warranty-law/#faq_88

3/5/2011 2:34:57 PM

yeh i dont really care about the drive itself. shittiest part is unless this comes back to life, i've lost my MSDN licenses in hindsight i should have emailed the keys to myself for backup... shitballs.

3/5/2011 2:44:34 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbq8vfs1wYY

3/5/2011 3:32:46 PM

Quote :

"i've lost my MSDN licenses"

Unless they're from years past, you can pull them up. Even then, some are still tied to your account ?I think.

I keep my TechNet license keys in a Google Docs Spreadsheet for quick reference.

3/6/2011 12:53:56 AM

freezer trick should get you an hour or so to get your most critical data off the drive.

3/6/2011 6:08:14 AM

Well the freezer trick worked. I froze it over night and this morning it stopped the read head crashing. The partitions still wouldnt mount, so i ran the mac Disk Utility which repaired them and that worked as well. I got all my shit off, woot.

So now i just need to warranty this thing.

3/6/2011 2:46:52 PM

nice. i'm like 2 for 7 all time with the freezer trick. glad it worked out!

3/6/2011 4:37:49 PM

awesome news. As that video explains, you're extremely lucky your problem was one of the less common. My laptop started clicking and the platters were seized. I tried freezing and rubber mallet-ing and eventually got so desperate I fooled myself into thinking my office was a cleanroom. Grabbed a dremel and a torx bit.

I got the platter unstuck, but arm was like "wtf am i supposed to do now?"

I lost a huge collection of MSDN isos and other rare disk images i'd made over the year. Does anyone have advice as to how to download every technet iso and store it? Am I forced do add each one to the DLMger? I'd love to find a super seeded 500GB torrent with everything I need.

3/6/2011 5:01:59 PM

And interestingly, i've tried the HD again three times while at room temp and it failed the original way all three times. So it looks like it prob was the freezing and it wasn't just a coincidence.

3/9/2011 7:33:31 PM