Help accessing external hard drive

I have a Seagate BUP Slimline 1TB external drive, all was working well, but I think I have pulled it out while it was "reading"

External drive shows in device manager and properties says its working properly

Nothing showing in Explorer or My Computer
Nothing showing in Disk Management

I have tried right clicking it within device manager to try and force it to disable/enable or update driver or uninstall and it just hangs indefinitely.

I have downloaded a couple of data recovery programs but they don't see the drive.

I have plugged the external into my sons desktop and it's not seen there either.

Does anyone know of a fix for this? or have I rendered it useless?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks, I will try that shortly, will let you know how it goes

Thanks for your help MightyMiroWD

I have downloaded Linux Mint, booted from the CD but it doesn't do anything when I plug in the USB Drive.
Nothing to be seen in Devices or Computer

Any other ideas?

MightyMiroWD said:

Hi @3billy3!

Since the drive appears in Device Manager you can try to boot with Linux Live CD and see if you can access the data stored on it. In order to do that just follow these steps:

1. Download/burn the ISO image to a CD or USB.
2. Change the boot order to the media you burned the Linux on.
3. Once it loads, you could try and mount the drive (or if Linux can read it, it will mount by itself) and see if it is recognized. In case it is - transfer the data.

Once the information is stored on another location you can run a diagnostic test on the external with the manufacturer tool and see if anything wrong will be detected. In case there is you can RMA it back and get a replacement unit if it's still under warranty.

Hope this helps and let me know how it went. Feel free to upload some screenshots as well so I can take a look. :)

Thanks for trying friend!

MightyMiroWD said:

3billy3 said:

Thanks for your help MightyMiroWD

I have downloaded Linux Mint, booted from the CD but it doesn't do anything when I plug in the USB Drive.
Nothing to be seen in Devices or Computer

Any other ideas?

I'm sorry to say that, but there's something wrong going on with the drive and it seems like it's failing. At this point I'd suggest to look for a replacement.

Since you've already tried some data recovery programs and they failed to recognize the unit, you can check for some data recovery company and hopefully they will be able to retrive the information. Most manufacturers have their partners when it comes to that, so you can take a look in the official website if there are any listed.

Best of luck!

You said that your drive was visible in Device Manager. Please post a screenshot of the Device Manager expanding the Disk drives in it.

Thanks for the reply jumanji, attached screenshot

Doesn't give me the info I thought I would get - the model Number.

Never mind. Download install and run SeaTools for Windows. Run the short Test and Long Test and check the health of the drive. Let us see what is in store.

SeaTools for Windows | Seagate

How to use SeaTools for Windows

Do only the Short DST, Short Generic and Long Generic.

Do not click on Advanced Tests. If you do press CTRL+Alt+Del and end the program in Task Manager.