FreeAgent External Hard stopped working (unknown, not initialized)

Sedhadi · 14 Feb 2015

Yesterday, I was working with my PC while my 1TB Seagate external hard (Amazon.com: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB USB 3.0 Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive in Black STAA1000101: Electronics) was plugged in via USB. The USB connection was a little bit loose.

Then when I was plugging a USB flash memory in, I noticed that the external hard was disconnected.
I connected it again, but it didn't appear in My Computer.
Here is the state in Disk Management and Device Manager:

After that, I plugged out the "SATA to USB converter" from the hard and connected it directly to SATA cable inside the PC case (like internal HDD), but this time nothing showed up in Disk Management, Device Manager and BIOS. However, it took a long time for the system to boot.

I searched and read lots of threads and tested some other stuff:

(It didn't appear in Minitool Partion Wizad).

I've got a lot of data on this HDD which really matters to me.

Any help is really appreciated.

Sedhadi · 15 Feb 2015

Here are the screen-shots and images again:

jumanji · 15 Feb 2015

No escape to say anything else. Even a direct connection has failed to show it. Your drive is dead. You may contact Seagate Tech. support and try to get a replacement if under warranty.

As for data recovery, no DIY is possible when the drive does not show up anywhere. Only a competent Data Recovery Professional service may be able to do it.

( I have the same USB3 GoFlex drive but 750GB which I have been using for all my experiments. In spite of innumerable clean wipes and MBR/GPT formats, wiping individual sectors etc., it is still going strong. Almost 4 years old.

Only once recently it gave me a heart-break when it became "read only" - "write protected" during an experiment. I tried almost everything on the book, to undo the read only and almost gave up as lost and preparing myself to buy another drive.. One internet trick said just toggle it offline and then to online again. And why the hell it happened? It happened. It was back to life and normal. No longer read only. No longer write-protected and I could format it again. A technical explanation still evades me.)

Sedhadi · 16 Feb 2015

Some new screenshots:

jumanji · 16 Feb 2015

OK, now that you have the drive connected as a secondary drive on a desktop, let us take Windows out of the equation and test it with Seatools for DOS.

Download, burn the new Seatools for DOS on a CD, boot from it and run the Quick and extended Tests.

SeaTools for DOS | Seagate

Report the results.

Sedhadi · 16 Feb 2015

When I connect it via SATA cable (like internal hards), it doesn't show up in BIOS.
Do you want me to connect it via SATA or USB while testing Seatools for DOS?

jumanji · 16 Feb 2015

OK, I lost track. You had indeed said that when you did the direct connection it didn't show anywhere. That indeed clinches the issue and indicates the drive is dead.

So you ran Seatool for Windows on it as an external drive.

Your new screenshots in post#4 are also as seen on the external drive.

Whatever, Seatools for Windows did not see your drive and therefore could not run the tests.

That clinches the issue that your drive is dead.

Yes, when connected as an external drive , the bios and Windows can read some drive information from the firmware in the SATA to USB interface in the enclosure. That however does not mean anything more than that. The drive test failed. When connected directly even that info was not available to the BIOS or Windows.

Opinions may vary and I am also not infallible. :). So wait to see if others see it differently and can give some solution to recover data from your drive.