Hi all

I have an external Lacie P3 160GB USB2.0 drive which has been working perfectly for six months.
When I switched it on this morning as usual, it made a series of toned beeping noises, followed by a brief grinding noise.
It is then silent for a few seconds, before repeating the pattern.
The drive is no longer recognised by windows, and I can't access it.
It makes the same noise regardless of whether the USB cable is connected to the PC or not.
Do you think the drive is dead, and if so is there anything I can do to salvage at least some of the data on it?
A friend thinks the drive has overheated and suggested leaving it in the freezer overnight :| Does this sound plausible?

Thanks for any help

Freezer :evil:

Hmmm I wouldn't suggest that to be honest, at the end of the day if you leave it out of your machine with nothing connected it will cool down anyway.

"Grinding noises" normally means that the read/write heads are touching the disk platter (where all your info is). When this happens it is normally a case of throwing it out and getting a new drive.

If you have only had it for 6 months then it might be worth contacting the people you bought it from and get a replacement.

As for recovering the data, I don't think you will be able to. Try connect the drive into another PC but if it still "grinds" when you plug it in then it is buggered.

Sorry.