Seagate external

1. Your new 3TB drive formatted with Windows Disk Management appears perfectly OK with the 128MB MSR partition in place.( This will not be shown in Windows Disk Management.Reason why I wanted to see it in Partition Wizard.)

2. It would appear that Sector 0 the all important sector has gone corrupt in the faulty drive.

3. We may still try to visualize what is exactly there by viewing its content in bootice at sector level, save it and then try to rewrite a new MBR code.

But before we do anything the integrity of the drive has to be tested. That will also give as an idea whether the drive turning bad is only due a corrupted sector 0 alone or bad sectors all the way in the data area. If there are too many bad sectors it will indicate so. But if it finds only few and can repair those then the drive will be good to go and we can attempt to rebuild sector 0 at the sector level or initialize the disk in Windows Disk management.

Download , install and run Seatools for Windows from here SeaTools | Seagate

Also read the Seatools for Windows Guide in that page on how to use it. ( I haven't run Seatools for ages and so I may not be of any help.) Run the Short Generic Test and then the Long Generic Test with Repair option "all" selected. Short generic test may take only some time while the Long Generic test on 3TB may take hours. Also note the time taken. If it all finishes within seconds in a jiffy then it would mean that the tests did not really run due to hardware fault even though it may indicate a PASS result (false positive).

Post the findings. I am not the one to give up easily. I will use all the arrows in my quiver but it is going to be a long process and needs perseverance and willingness to experiment.( All this only if the integrity test passes.)

Not a good sign. Anyway give it enough time.

I am going to proceed further examining the sectors only tomorrow.