Internal drive E: changed to RAW: filesystem...

Darren Hodgson · *Last edited by Darren Hodgson; 11-06-2011 at 15:37.*

Until this morning I've had no problems with any of my hard drives. My system is set up with four internal hard drives, one Crucial SSD for Windows 7 and three SATAII hard drives D:, E: and G:.

E: was used solely for game installs, mainly Steam, but this morning when I booted my computer Windows took forever to load up, over 20 minutes, despite running off an SSD which normally boots in less than 30 seconds. When I was able to open Computer I noticed that drive E: was referred to as a Local Drive rather than Games as I had named it. The filesystem was RAW: and there was no data on it.

This drive is a Seagate ST3500320AS which I discovered had a serious firmware issue that could cause the drive to fail unexpectedly. As such I updated the firmware to the newer SD1A version which was supposed to fix the issue. This was over two years ago and the drive had been fine until now. I had no warning the drive was going to fail, it just happened.

Now this drive seems to not only cause a long bootup time for Windows but seems to freeze my computer if I try to access it in any way such as to check it with Computer Management or to try to recover data from it. I have been able to disable it from the Device Manager though and that fixes the long Windows boot. My computer doesn't freeze either.

I can't even click on it to format it nor can I format from the command prompt as the software seems to hang with nothing happening. Basically any attempt to access the drive except to disable/enable it causes my computer to hang or boot slow.

My question is this: is the drive irrecoverable or is there any way I can recover the data at all at no extra cost? The filesystem did show as RAW: but seems to now show as NTFS even though I've done nothing to it. However, I still cannot open the drive in Explorer as it just causes it to hang.

It looks like I'm going to have to order a new drive but I'll get a 1 TB one to replace this 500 GB one. The real bummer though is that this was my Steam drive that had over 350 GB worth of games, thankfully most of them purchased on disc, but with Skyrim out this Friday it means that I'll have no drive to install it to until the replacement arrives?

Also, how come SATAII hard drives have suddenly shot up in price? My Samsung F3 drive (D

cost me £60 about two years ago but seems to sell for over £100 now on most sites such as Scan, etc. That's ridiculous IMO as these drives had always dropped in price never increased!!!

---TK--- · *Last edited by ---TK---; 11-06-2011 at 16:41.*

that drive does indeed sound like it died. one of my seagates died a couple months ago and I had to rma it. if its under warranty rma it. h/d prices skyrocketed because of flooding in thailand. if you can wait for the rma to come back, do so. because h/d prices are not coming down any time soon. I put the seagate 1.5 tb in my kids machine because I bought a wd green 2tb to replace it for $80 bucks. I didnt feel like buying a hugely overpriced 1tb for my kids rig so I just used that. It came back as "fixed" as they did not give me a new one in return.
EDIT: I had all the same symptoms as you when my hd died too

Darren Hodgson · 11-06-2011, 17:18 | posts: 9,661 | Location: England

Thanks for the reply, tommyk2005.

I've had my 500 GB Seagate for over three years now and can't wait a month or however long it takes for a replacement (if I'm even entitled to that). I need a new hard drive a.s.a.p. as the two storage drives I have are already near full and Skyrim is out next Friday.

It's typical of my luck though that a hard drive should die just when I thought they were reliable (I've haven't had one die on me in god knows how many years) and prices have shot right up! Won't be buying a Seagate though as the firmware issue put me right off them shortly after I bought one and found out about it.

Darren Hodgson · 11-06-2011, 17:32 | posts: 9,661 | Location: England

I managed to find a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB for £90 + £5 shipping. Most other sites are selling them for £110 or more. At those prices, SSDs are starting to more like bargains!

---TK--- · 11-06-2011, 17:35 | posts: 14,692 | Location: New Jersey, USA

buy it and rma that seagate. either use the seagate or sell it. it took almost a month for my replacement

sdamaged99 · 11-07-2011, 17:36 | posts: 1,912 | Location: Isle of Man

Thats the beauty of Western Digital. Advance Replacement FTW

att_user · 11-08-2011, 12:41 | posts: 336

So much for your phrase "HDD are built to last forever". :-)

What happened to your SSD? It should be dead by now according to your SSDlife readings.