I'd like to take this moment...to cry

So....I've got some potentially devastating news.  The Indy 4 discs may never happen.

Last night...I turned on my desktop PC to do a favor for a friend.

Guess what?

Dead.

I either get a flashing curser or a note that says "bootable disc not found."

I went inside the computer and I don't hear any problems with the drive. it's spinning up. I'm not hearing any clicking. But I'm guessing something went wrong somewhere.

The only thing I can figure out is that I had a usb card reader plugged in when I turned it on, although I don't know how that would affect it.

I tried a hard drive enclosure and, although I can still hear the drive speed up normally, I never get any sign that it's showing up. 

So now it's off to data recovery.  I got a quote of $590 for everything...if I decide to go with it. :(  This was the explanation of what they think happened:

Your hard drive most likely has firmware corruption. Typically the drive spins up fine, doesn't click but never show up in the system or shows up with 0 capacity. It's a very common problem with Seagate's new 7200.11 family - we receive several requests a week with this issue. Data recovery in such case requires use of specialized equipment and experience to access firmware on the platters and repair corrupted modules.

So now I have to decide which place to send it to.  I'd just like to know if it's there or not.

In other news, I've ordered two new drives from Newegg and they should be here tomorrow, I would assume.  I'm going to buy a program that will clone my OS drive and install both of them.  That way, if this should happen again, I'll be covered.

Let this be a lesson, boys and girls.....

:(

Please tell me you tried booting WITHOUT the usb card reader. If there is a card in it, it may be trying to boot from the card. The exact same thing happens when I start up my desktop with anything plugged into the USB port, but I have it setup that way. Also make sure there was disc in the floppy drive or maybe even a bootable CD in the tray. However, since you already have the hdd out of the machine and in an enclosure, try plugging into a different computer, maybe even a Mac or Linux machine, shocking how many times that's helped me. Different OS's handle things differently. I'd try all of those options WAY before I'd even consider going to a data recovery. Those guys will do exactly as I've told you and if they are successful, they'll chuckle as they plan to charge you $500 or $600 dollars for a hour or so of actual work, if that is what you want to call it.

Yeah i've tried booting without the card reader in there already but thanks for the tip. :)

Trust me, I'm going to try every option possible however, I've talked to a friend who knows a lot about these drives and he says they're NOTORIOUS for having a firmware problem.  I'm going to contact Seagate today and see if they'll be any help.   it's worth a shot, no?

Like I said, the biggest problem is that I've had 2 computers that completely won't acknowledge that there's a drive hooked up to them.  That's the biggest issue here. :(

adywan said:

Yeh, there's a huge problem with Seagate drives. Not sure if this will help at all

http://forums.slizone.com/lofiversion/index.php?t33993.html

 Yup.  That's what happened.  If it's bricked, it's bricked.  You can't flash the firmware if you can't get any bios ANYWHERE to recognize it. :(

Anyway...hopefully after $600 +/-, I'll get my stuff back. :(

I think that Seagate is recovering the data for free since it is their fault.

ferris209 said:

I think that Seagate is recovering the data for free since it is their fault.

 From what I read, Seagate STARTED doing it for free...and then stopped.  They probably realized what a HUGE problem it was and said "no more." I couldn't even get a live person on the phone when I tried calling last week.  I didn't want to wait longer and risk the data no longer being there.

digitalfreaknyc said:

ferris209 said:

I think that Seagate is recovering the data for free since it is their fault.

 

 From what I read, Seagate STARTED doing it for free...and then stopped.  They probably realized what a HUGE problem it was and said "no more." I couldn't even get a live person on the phone when I tried calling last week.  I didn't want to wait longer and risk the data no longer being there.

http://consumerist.com/266646/contact-seagate-executive-customer-service

ferris209 said:

digitalfreaknyc said:

ferris209 said:

I think that Seagate is recovering the data for free since it is their fault.

 

 From what I read, Seagate STARTED doing it for free...and then stopped.  They probably realized what a HUGE problem it was and said "no more." I couldn't even get a live person on the phone when I tried calling last week.  I didn't want to wait longer and risk the data no longer being there.

http://consumerist.com/266646/contact-seagate-executive-customer-service

 

 Thanks for the info.  I dunno what I can do now.  i suppose email them and tell them of my situation?  They're not going to reimburse me, I'm sure.

CompMovieGuy said:

stop yelling....

Dayv has been doing that here for, what, five or six years? Certainly much longer than you or I have been here. You'll PROBABLY get used to it - I actually find it kind of entertaining now.  Of course, if everyone started doing it...not so good.

If Psycho_Dayv posted on a forum I personally created, he'd be permabanned instantly, no questions asked. Get a new keyboard if your caps lock key is broken.

I'll use adblock plus if anyones avatar or signature image annoys me. Thank you Mozilla Firefox and add-ons.

It's sort of on-topic...lots of crying going on LOL