Seagate external drive
Discussion
The reviews for this model show that it seems to be a pretty unreliable product. It seems many people have had problem with it disconnecting or losing data. Assuming that the drive hasn't been dropped, it may be possible to remove the drive from its casing and install it in a new external casing to rule out external USB interface failure. The internal drive itself will be a standard SATA unit. I use an external dock that enables me to connect up (and easily clone) a disk without having to install it. I use this one but many others are available:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inateck-Docking-Station-F...
You can buy a dock like this or take the drive to a repair shop where they will likely do the same thing. If after connecting up the internal drive directly and it's still not showing up in Windows, then it's possible that the drive electronics have failed. In some cases it may be possible to use the external control board from another identical hard drive to replace yours. But if the actual drive mechanism has failed, then things get very expensive and you may have to go to a dedicated data recovery firm.
On the other hand, it could be that the format of the disk is corrupt and there's nothing wrong with the physical drive or electronics. In that case, you should be able to still see the disk in the computer management or disk management application. You should run it as administrator. In the search box next to the start button, type compmgmt.msc but don't press return. Then right click on the result at the top saying "Computer Management" and select "Run as Administrator". You may have to enter a pin or password.
Once the app opens, click on Storage and Disk Management on the left hand side. Then in the lower pane of the window you should see all the disks attached to the system, and in the upper pane you should see the volumes that Windows represents as drive letters, for example C, D, E. If you see a disk in the lower pane that does not have an associated drive letter, then that could mean that the disk data has been corrupted. DO NOT format the disk or attempt to create a new drive letter, as you will almost certainly destroy your chances of retrieving data.
Come back and tell us what you see.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inateck-Docking-Station-F...
You can buy a dock like this or take the drive to a repair shop where they will likely do the same thing. If after connecting up the internal drive directly and it's still not showing up in Windows, then it's possible that the drive electronics have failed. In some cases it may be possible to use the external control board from another identical hard drive to replace yours. But if the actual drive mechanism has failed, then things get very expensive and you may have to go to a dedicated data recovery firm.
On the other hand, it could be that the format of the disk is corrupt and there's nothing wrong with the physical drive or electronics. In that case, you should be able to still see the disk in the computer management or disk management application. You should run it as administrator. In the search box next to the start button, type compmgmt.msc but don't press return. Then right click on the result at the top saying "Computer Management" and select "Run as Administrator". You may have to enter a pin or password.
Once the app opens, click on Storage and Disk Management on the left hand side. Then in the lower pane of the window you should see all the disks attached to the system, and in the upper pane you should see the volumes that Windows represents as drive letters, for example C, D, E. If you see a disk in the lower pane that does not have an associated drive letter, then that could mean that the disk data has been corrupted. DO NOT format the disk or attempt to create a new drive letter, as you will almost certainly destroy your chances of retrieving data.
Come back and tell us what you see.
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