Seagate external hard drive won't power up

[oliabh]

hi there,
I've looked at other responses but I'm not sure they help me, I'm hoping you can. I have a Seagate desk external hard drive which I store in my safe as it holds all my photos of my kids. I took it out today to put more files into it but it won't power up. I have tried using another computer and a wall socket but still nothing. I would appreciate any help in getting my most valued files back...thank you. Oliabh

[caperjack]

my experience is that its usually related to the case ,so maybe removing it and hooking directly to a computer will help determine if its the drive or the external case malfunction

[oliabh]

I have read that also but how does one do that? This will be the end of the box, right?

[kes166]

I've never seen a seagate external drive, but ideally external drives should have screws that you can remove to take it apart. Inside will be the hard drive. It'll either be an IDE or a Sata hard drive. You'll need to plug it into your computer's power supply and mother board in order to read it.

Without actually being able to see what the inside drive looks like, I can't give much more information than that.

[oliabh]

Is it easy to plug it into the motherboard?

[oliabh]

I have looked into taking case apart and im pretty sure I can do that much. how do i connect the hard drive to the wall and computer. do i need a special connector for that? What do you think of buying a hard drive enclosure and connecting it that way. looking for the safest easiest way to make that connection as i really dont trust myself to open the laptop up to reveal motherboard.

[kes166]

It needs to be plugged into a tower. I wouldn't recommend opening a laptop either.

If you are unsure on how to plug the hard drive into a tower, you can probaby get it done for a hundred bucks at a tech store, best buy, or some other place and have the data placed on some other form of media. A Jump drive or a few DVD's.

If, however, the drive is shot, you're looking at a couple thousand bucks for a data recovery group to try and recover data from the drive. With a litte luck, hopefully it's only the seagate frame and not the drive itself.

[oliabh]

Thank you so much for your advice. I will bring it to a store to see what they can do for me. I was not looking forward to taking anything apart..hahaha...take care.