Recovering Data From A Dead Seagate Central

Hi.. Just wanted to share this with anyone that may need this (like I did).

Scenario: You have a Seagate Central 3TB or 4TB and one day it dies. The green flashing/blinking light of death.

Model: SRN01C (p/n 1EN2P3-500)

I searched forums across the internet and the solution came from the Linux community (but don't worry, you won't have to learn Linux to recover your data). See here:

- https://myanwyn.blogspot.ca/2014/08/how-to-recover-seagate-central-data.html

- http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/reading-data-from-seagate -hard-drive-extracted-from-seagate-centr…

Key lessons learned:

1) Always backup your valuable data (photos, music, documents, etc) to multiple locations; not only a USB external hard drive (especially with only one drive inside). Consider cloud solutions like Crashplan.com and Network Attached Storage (NAS) with two disks like Synology or QNAP products. Assume your drive will fail at some point.

2) The Seagate Central has a normal SATA hard drive inside but you cannot read the data using the standard OSX or Windows; you need software that can read the Linux file formats Ext3/Ext4. Multiple people in a forum mentioned a great product called "Paragon ExtFS" which has a full functional 10-day free trial (which saved me!)

Mac Version: https://www.paragon-software.com/ufsdhome/store/extfs-mac/

Windows Version: Download free trial - ExtFS for Windows

I used this USB3 to SATA adapter on Amazon - "Inateck USB 3.0 to SATA Converter Adapter for 2.5 inch/3.5 inch Hard Drive Disk HDD and SSD, Power Adapter Included" https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00OZCQ5BM/

To be clear, I don't work for Paragon... but the product helped me recover my data using the 10-day free trial; so I'm happy to pass this along to others!

I started with the Windows version then realized they had a Mac version... which was great because I was able to copy the important files from the drive and access the 2TB+ Time Machine backup.sparsebundle that was on the Seagate Central... My next task will be to try and recover some Mac Mail from his Time Machine backup.

Hope this helps others.

Good luck.

Shane