Seagate USB external hard drive not visible

roytom

No longer visible by windows.
It’s an older Freeagent (500gb) drive that stands vehicle with a mini usb socket (not micro). It goes back a few years at least.
It’s powering up but I cannot discover it on windows - it illuminated orange strip lights up.
My friend said he could hear a clicking sound which I seem to recall from the past is bad news.
Any chance of recovering the data stored on it?

Thanks

zagubov

roytom wrote: »

No longer visible by windows.
It’s an older Freeagent (500gb) drive that stands vehicle with a mini usb socket (not micro). It goes back a few years at least.
It’s powering up but I cannot discover it on windows - it illuminated orange strip lights up.
My friend said he could hear a clicking sound which I seem to recall from the past is bad news.
Any chance of recovering the data stored on it?

Thanks

More info please.
Was it ever visible on the same USB socket on the same computer you're using it on now?

roytom

Ta, yes always visible there before.

I’ve looked at the YouTube vids on fixing a jammed hard drive and if needs be I’ll dismantle the drive as a total last resort.

googler

Yes, take the drive out of the USB caddy and connect it directly to your motherboard as an internal secondary drive (assuming you have a desktop PC available - put it in another caddy if you don't)

roytom

I’ll give that a go, I have a stand-alone usb external hard drive connector I can try first.

were

those old drives they were heavy on power usage. if you used a normal long usb cable they would not work, or keep spinning up and down.

They were supplied with short fat-ish cables

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If the disk is still not recognisable and you have to open it, hopefully is a sata drive with a usb addon, and not a bespoke usb only one. If it is sata plug it into your motherboard