External HD no longer shows up

[Danny S]

I have a 21.5in iMac mid-2011 running High Sierra 10.13.6 with external Thunderbolt 2 Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive. The drive recently stopped working. I've had this drive running almost nonstop for 5 years. Even when I shut down my iMac, the drive was still plugged in and powered up. It appears the internal power plant fried (no lights, no sounds, etc). I removed the HD from it's case and it is a SATA Seagate Barracuda 3000GB. I purchased a USB 3 Insignia 2-Bay HD Dock from Best Buy, popped the HD in, hear it whirring and spooling up, but the "drive light" on the Insignia never lights up, flickers, etc and the iMac never sees the drive. I've followed several tut's suggesting to go into Disk Utility and it's not there either.

I assume the Thunderbolt aspect of the previous housing is not the cause. I wonder if the USB 3 is a problem for my iMac (USB 2).

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome

 

[BrianBaughn]

The drive is five years old and probably failed. Do you have a Windows machine from which you could run SeaTools?

SeaTools | Support Seagate US

SeaTools - Quick diagnostic tool that checks the health of your drive.

www.seagate.com

 

[Danny S]

Yes, I have a WIN 7 machine. I'm installing the WIN 1.4.0.7 now

 

[Danny S]

After install, I rebooted and connected the USB Drive Hub. Win 7 sees the hub and installed a USB driver for it automatically. The Sea Tools app sees my internal drive but not the HD in the USB hub.

 

[Danny S]

Tried diff USB ports, unseating/reseating drive in USB Bay, tried both slots, recycled power, rebooted PC, etc.

No sign of the HD in Sea Tools.

 

[BrianBaughn]

It's not conclusive, I suppose, but two connection methods failing makes it likely that the drive is kaput.

 

[DeltaMac]

I have a seagate backup plus that I could hear the drive spin up, then a few seconds later, can hear it spool down, bad drive. I went to the Seagate support page, typed in the serial number for the drive, and got the drive replaced under warranty. Maybe you could try the same. I think it is a 5-year warranty, maybe you are still within that time.