Restoring hard disk

I have this Seagate Freeagent 250GB hard0disk One fine day i wake to find- Its crashed! I realyl dont think I have been man handling it as it was all good since past 1.5 - 2 years. The problem is I have my whole 3 years official mails archived in it along with other UNI work , so it quite important I restore the data back.

Do any of you guys have ideas how can i do it? The Ceedo agent doesnot detect the disk in the first place for me to do anything with it. it doesnot just show up when i explore the computer

Try this - While your HDD is still in place, boot your comptuer using uBuntu CD/DVD. Choose the "Try uBuntu without Installing" option on the boot screen.

Once uBuntu boots into live CD mode - you can then access your HDD from 'Places' in uBuntu. You can then copy all the data to some other media (Pen Drive). Does this help?

Oh! I already have Ubuntu on my laptop. I will boot my computer through Ubuntu and this way out. i just hope I get the data back. One day at work without Archieve mails is a chaos

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It did not work. The problem is none of the OS are able to detect that there is a device connected to the USB drive.

durga

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It did not work. The problem is none of the OS are able to detect that there is a device connected to the USB drive.

Could you access all your files on Windows through uBuntu? You can find them in 'Places'. For USB detection; if it doesn't happen automatically, you'll have to mount it manually. But I don't see any need for that. If USB is not detected, you could simply burn a CD/DVD directly from uBuntu.

I have mounted my windows file system already. So I generally do access my windows files from ubuntu. Here's the catch - the CD DVD drive has gone rotten on my laptop. But whats with CD player to hard disk issue?

I tried changing the connection cables etc. of the drive and tried to open this drive from various other computers, the hard disk it self gives out a very weird noise out. i think it has developed an issue with fan.

Do you mean internal or external hard disk? Noise issue is may be due to dust. clean it by passing compressed air, you can use a vacuum cleaner.

Oh! I think I can try that. Thanks Vikram!!
I tried to do a bit of trouble shotting using the SeaTools what seagate provided for free. All the results are a 'pass', which left me wondering what actually got screwed up . I mean how could the tests pass when the drive is not detected on the first stand.

There are some hardware care unit in Nehru Place (Delhi) which recovers crashed disk for Rs 800. You can find similar units near your loacality, of course its your last resort.