I bought a Seagate FreeAgent 1.5TB drive this summer (yes…just a few months ago) because my Western Digital 320g drive was full. I was so excited to pick up the drive because I made the commitment to shoot only in RAW, so file storage space is a paramount. After transferring all my images and music from my Western Digital drive, as well as transferring files residing on my laptop harddrive, and subsequent image files, I quickly filled up about 1/2 of the drive. No worries. I still have over 750GB of storage left on this one drive. Sweet!
Or, so I thought.
I suspect some of you may have experienced the horror that follows.
Last night, I went to pull some images from the external drive. I plugged the power adapter into the wall and immediately heard a dull “beep…beep…beep.” Hmmm, that doesn’t sound good. My anxiety level went up a few more notches when I noticed that the drive was not recognized on my computer. Now while I like to fancy myself as an advanced amateur IT guy, I had no clue what to do next other than unplug the power supply and plug it back in.
“beep…beep…beep “
Ah man…this is NOT good. Even though ALL my image files are saved on this drive, I decided not to panic. I will do some research, and solicit help from my friends. Sure enough, within moments, I had a couple of photography friends on Twitter as well as a workplace friend offer advice and recommendations. Before consulting some of the “third party” services for data recovery, I thought, “Why not contact Seagate? It’s their faulty hard drive that is the source of my angst.”
I will let the chat with the service support person speak for itself:
Michael Carter: Thank you for contacting i365, A Seagate Company – Professional Services , my name is Michael Carter. How may I help you today? matthew : Hi. I have a FreeAgent 1.5 TB external drive that is beeping when connected to a power supply and not showing up on my computer. I fear the drive is damaged in some way. Before sending it back, I wanted to inquire about data recovery. Communication with the RightNow Chat service has been lost. Please wait while attempts are made to restore the connection. Disconnection in 240 seconds. Connection resumed. Michael Carter: We can certainly help you recover the data off the drive however be informed that data recovery is a premium paid service which is not covered under warranty. Michael Carter: May I know your geographical location and phone number? matthew : I understand that it’s not covered under warranty. I am in Washington DC. My number is _______ Michael Carter: Thank you. Michael Carter: To understand it better and to help you with this issue, may I ask you few questions ? matthew : certainly Michael Carter: May I know if your Computer can still view the Storage device? matthew : no matthew : it doesn’t show up Michael Carter: Does Bios recognize it when the computer boots? matthew : I can’t recall. Unfortunately, I am not at my personal computer and external Seagate drive at the moment. Michael Carter: Is the drive making any Abnormal? eg: clicking or grinding noise. matthew : it makes a steady, muted beeping noise about every 2 seconds. it will do this for a while and then it appears the drive shuts down. Michael Carter: Is it a Single hard drive or is it connected to a network of Server ? matthew : single hard drive. it’s the Seagate FREEAGENT DESK drive 7200-RPM USB2.0 1500 GB Michael Carter: Was the hard drive opened by any other Data Recovery Center or Was there any Recovery Attempt made ? matthew : no. yesterday was the first time it didn’t work, and i am exploring options for data recovery before sending the unite back for warranty replacement. Michael Carter: Which Operating system do you use ? matthew : Windows Vista Michael Carter: May I know if this data is for Personal or Business needs ? Michael Carter: Thank you for all the information. matthew : both Michael Carter: Based on the information given, there should have been some sort of physical damage occurred to the hard drive. Michael Carter: We have two services a priority is where you get the data in 2-5 Business days economy it is 2-4 weeks. Michael Carter: We are looking at a Range of $399- $2500 depending on the questions answered I will give you a fixed quote. matthew : wow! what determines where the cost begins on that scale (other than priority)? There’s a variance of $2,100. Michael Carter: The economy service would cost you $1,600.00 USD and the priority service is $2,300.00 USD. Michael Carter: We always offer a “no data, no charge” guarantee – if we can’t recover your data, there is absolutely no charge to you. matthew : what happened to $399? Michael Carter: The $399 quote is only applicable if the drive is recognized by the computer and does not make any abnormal sound. matthew : ok. well, that should have been ruled out based on my responses. Is there service level between $399 and $1600? Seems like a big leap Michael Carter: There is a form online which you to fill and submit. Michael Carter: The inlab range starts from $700 – $2500 USD, for a physically damaged drive $1600 USD is the starting price. matthew : what if the drive is just malfunctioning…no fault of mine. you’re saying that i have to pay extra for Seagate’s bad drive? Michael Carter: I understand your concern Mathew, Seagate can replace the drive free of cost if drive is under warranty but not the data on it. Michael Carter: I can walk you through the paperwork to proceed with the in-lab recovery. matthew : right, but do you see my issue here? I’m trying to give you a hard time, but I’m at a loss as to why I am paying for data recovery on a faulty drive, not to mention having to cover the extra cost for damaged drive repair. matthew : i meant to say that I am NOT trying to give you a hard time matthew : it’s just unnerving to think I have a malfunctioning drive (Seagate’s issue), but I am responsible for footing up to $2500 to recover my data from this failed product. Michael Carter: Due to highly expensive nature of the service and the infrastructure it needs data recovery is a paid service. matthew : I appreciate your time explaining what’s available. I think that I will shop around for other data recovery services before committing. Michael Carter: Sure, you can take your time to decide on it, but ensure the drive is not opened by any other data recovery as the cost could go much higher. Michael Carter: I can also send you an email with the instructions to submit the form. matthew : go higher with your services right? Will do. I plan to have this drive opened, and recovered, only once. Thanks. Please shoot me the email in the event I chose to use Seagate’s data recover service. Michael Carter: That is correct. Michael Carter: I confirm your email as ___________. matthew : that’s correct. Michael Carter: Sure will send an email. Michael Carter: Is there anything else that I may help you with? matthew : No. That’s it. Thanks for sharing the services and costs Michael Carter: Thank you for contacting i365, Have a great day. Michael Carter: Bye. matthew : You too. Bye.
Maybe I’m wrong, but is it too much to think, let alone expect, that the company that produced the faulty drive would be willing to cover the cost of data recovery on one of its failed units — particularly one that is still under warranty? I took exception to the notion that the only way for this drive to fail was due to physical damage. Ask anyone who knows me, and the y will tell you that I treat my equipment with kid gloves. The flipping drive was working two days ago, now it doesn’t. Unless our cat secretly gave the drive the Office Space treatment, I just don’t get it.
[sigh]…on to researching other data recovery services. If you know of a good service, please share it in the comments. I already received a Tweet from DataSavers.com inviting me to check out there services. Gotta love social media.
Ok…I’m just sayin.’ Up to $2500 to recover data of your $149 [failed] product? That’s a pretty rhetorical question because I know that these companies know you are in a bind. Most people, particularly businesses would be willing to pay a pretty steep price to recover data. For me, I have to debate the pros and cons. I am at the nascent stage of my photography career. My business has just begun to make a ripple, in terms of client interest, and then BOOM! My entire stock if images from the last couple of years has potentially vanished. I have to determine how much those thousands of images are worth to me–not to mention my ability to even pay that much for recovery. (Do I sense a Help Save Matthew’s Image Files donation campaign coming on? Just kidding…sorta.)
Edited to add: Here is the text of an email I just received from Seagate, as a follow up to my chat with the service representative.
Please click on the following links to know more about the service levels offered -
1. Priority- fastest turn around time/ free return media
The cost for Priority Service will be $2300 which includes a free external drive with all your data on it. Furthermore, the drive will cover new two years of warranty.
[link removed]
The Promotion code : PRIO4
2. Economy – No evaluation fees/No data No charge
For Economy service it will cost you $1600 and your data will be returned to you on a trusted media of your choice like DVDs .
[link removed]
The Promotion code : ECON4
So let me get this straight. For an additional $700, Seagate will expedite recovery of my data and send it back to me on another one of their potentially faulty devices. Ummm…yeah, that sounds reasonable.
Again. Please share your opinions in the comments. I would really like to hear from you.
Ps. It took every ounce of restraint I have to keep this post family-language friendly.
As you might imagine I found your blog here as I have the dreaded beep beep beep going on in my Seagate 1.5 TB hard drive that is only a couple months old with all my photos from the past couple years. Just curious if you came to a conclusion with your hard drive and the outcome. Thanks.
Thanks for commenting Tom. A friend I developed on Twitter suggested that I pick up a USB cable/adapter, remove the case and try extracting the data. He commented that many times, the case is the problem. I'm happy to keep you posted. Hopefully, this will work and it will save us both $$, and, more importantly, our data.
Thanks Matthew.
By the way, found this on a CNET review of photo storage on Google picasa. You are right, it doesn't support raw. The last para may be of use.
Picasa's price cut raises an interesting prospect for photography enthusiasts, though. If it's going to set its prices to try to match some portion of the dropping prices of hard drives--not just this week, but regularly--it'll gradually become a more appealing place to back up photos in the cloud. Of course, like Flickr, it's chiefly for JPEG files, not the larger and more awkward raw files serious photographers often use. But even a JPEG backup is useful, especially with synchronization tools built into the Picasa software.
Paying Google $256 per year for 1TB of Picasa storage space is getting in the vicinity of the $100 price or so a 1TB external hard drive costs. Of course you only have to pay once for the hard drive, and even a slow USB hard drive is faster to access than photos on the Net, but Google's price includes backup and some assurance that you'll still have your photos if someone steals your laptop or your hard drive fails. Plus, of course, you get to share your photos.
A big gap here is support for raw files, something that SmugMug offers in its Amazon Web Services-based SmugVault. But that costs 22 cents per gigabyte per month, a price that rapidly gets steep when you consider how fast a modern SLR can fill up a 4GB flash memory card. SmugMug, a subscription-only site, caters to the serious set, though.
FYI: I was interested in the descriptions of the professional photographers speaking about their backup workflow at the meta-data seminar I went to a few months ago. Basically, they copy the images from their cards onto two different hard drives simultaneously, thus creating the original and the duplicate at the same time. Then they store a copy in the cloud. And periodically they store another hard drive copy somewhere off site. So they end up with 4 copies of each image - 2 on-site, 1 off-site, 1 in the cloud. And they don't erase their memory cards until they have tested the integrity of the images which have been transferred - I'm not sure if this step is manual or automated.
[The backup procedures that I learned long ago were to have two alternating on-site backup sources (so that you don't overwrite a good backup with a corrupt original), plus one off-site backup - but I like their idea of making a duplicate right on intake better.]
Similar thing happened to a brand new Seagate I had purchased. Luckily I stil hadnt erased anything from my computer. In my case since it was < than a month since I bought it, Amazon sent me a new one free of cost.
Such things have always made me think hard, would it be better to rent storage from Google and store all your items there?
This is crucial in your situation as it is related to your career. All the best.
Thanks Sri. It's been too long. Nice blog. It's making me hungry!
I have extra storage space on Google. I need to find out whether I can store the original RAW image files there. I need a secure place to keep the originals as well as the processed images.
Thanks Dotch. I haven't upgraded to Win 7 (yet). I figure it doesn't make sense to upgrade until I determine whether I'm making the move to Apple. I will note, however, that this apparent equipment failure could have just as easily affected a Mac user. It's not an Apple product. And, we all know nothing from Apple ever needs repair - http://www.macservice.com ;-)
Matthew, I am sorry to hear about your computing woes. I wonder if this is because you are using Windows 7 and not an Apple product. Good luck in your recovery sir.
Matthew -
I'm so very very sorry for your problem.
As to possible solutions, they are all kind of scary because, as Seagate says, sometimes recovery is compromised by prior recovery attempts. Two places you might want to try for a second opinion:
1. Ontrack has a great reputation for data recovery. Calling their support line (800-872-2599) may give you some free advice.
2. Boon (boonpc.com) in Bethesda is a very cheap and very good technician. We have used him successfully a number of times for fried hard drives and other maladies - that said, he is a one-man shop and a generalist, so this approach is always kind of risky.
I also have had great success with the open source data recovery tools, but again, this is scary for your critical data.
Best wishes,
Victoria
Michael Carter: Thank you for contacting i365, A Seagate Company – Professional Services , my name is Michael Carter. How may I help you today?
Communication with the RightNow Chat service has been lost. Please wait while attempts are made to restore the connection.
