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I have a Seagate 5gb drive that my PC's are not longer seeing. I'm hoping it's not lost. Is there any good tools out there for diagnosing & recovering drives?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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I don't buy Seagates because that happens. Their drive controller circuitry just up and quits.
Mine have come back periodically. Randomly. But no recovery tools will work on a drive with a dead controller.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Is there nothing I can do?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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You could send it to a data recovery outfit, but it won't be cheap. They'll take the drive apart in a clean environment and pull stuff right off the platters, or even simply replace the drive controller.
I don't think there's anything *reliable* you can do yourself.
I've had two do exactly what yours is doing. The only thing you might be able to do on your own is what I did. Leave it in your machine and pray. One day, when you boot, the little hamster in the thing will come back to life and the drive will enumerate.
At that point copy everything you have.
PSA: Seagate's commercial stuff is supposedly good. Their consumer gear is a dumpster fire in my experience. Multiple bad drives with your issue.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I see reports like the following pop up every once in a while. I think have seen them show up from different sources but the number of drives covered is always amazing to me.
Notice 171,000+ drives.
Hard Drive Failure Rates for Q1 2021[^]
honey the codewitch wrote: Seagate's commercial stuff is supposedly good
I think the following from the above suggests they agree with you.
"...that the 18TB Seagate drives...Customer development units are mechanically complete, but the firmware is considered non-production and as such the drives are considered test drives."
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When my Seagate recently failed to be seen by my PC, I pulled it out of computer attached to a SATA to USB cable, put on it top of a freeze pack from fridge and fired it up. It was heat problem with controller. I was able to pull all the data off to another external drive. Replaced it (grrr with a spare seagate drive copied data back and done. Yes, I hope I have better luck with my spare seagate (Barricuda). This is second time I have saved a drive using a freeze pack.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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That's good to know. You might tell the OP that. I'm sure he'd like to know.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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who or what is the OP?
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Sorry. OP means Original Poster or Original Post depending on the context.
In this case I'm referring to @kevinmorois
I hope I spelled your name right, Kevin! 
Edit: Never mind. I see you already did!
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Got it. I thought that was what you meant as soon as I asked. I re-posted as reply to original poster.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Can you hear/feel it spin up and load when you power it on?
If so you might have some luck pulling the drive itself out and putting it in a USB/SATA dock. I have a two-bay one and use it a lot flipping drives and their contents around.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Yes, I think it's spinning up. It's already in an external case
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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Can you hear the head moving or is it just the platters spinning?
Jeremy Falcon
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look at these tools, one of them may help you to back up the file from the hard drive...
diligent hands rule....
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Kevin Marois wrote: drive that my PC's are not longer seeing
Try different USB ports, try with all USB cables you have, different computers and operating systems.
Go to windows Disk Management and see if maybe you only need to assign a Drive Letter to the drive.
jhaga
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Won't help if it is the controller, but I have managed to recover data by putting the drive in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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Try running Diskpart from the Powershell. At the Diskpart prompt type list disk. Diskpart will see the disk and list it even if it has never been formatted or partitions created. If the disk is not shown in the list of disks recognized by Diskpart, I am afraid I don't believe you can recover it. Good luck!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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If drive is a spinner:
If its clicking, it's over
If you can feel it spinning, there is hope
Crack open the case to extract laptop sized drive and hook it up to sata cables
somehow on another pc or sata to usb adapter to then see if you can see it.
I drive is an SSD:
Silly Wabbit, it's over.
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Is it a HDD with a mechanical failure? As in, do you hear the head attempt to move at all on the platter? If that's the cause, you'll need to carefully transfer the plates to another drive first.
If that's not the case and it's just a corrupted table maybe with a few bad sectors, most file recovery software can help with that.
More importantly, I haven't used HDDs in years, but even back then Seagate is what you used when you don't care about reliability. If it's important, remote backups or a RAID. If it's not important, move on with life.
Jeremy Falcon
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I almost guarantee it's a drive controller problem. Seagate drives do this to me too.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Oh snap. Yeah, wouldn't surprise me.
Jeremy Falcon
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Oh, you probably know this, but if you do have to transfer the platters to another drive... keep them far, far, far away from magnets during the process. And don't let the oil on your fingers get on them.
Jeremy Falcon
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There should have been a backup.
"Hope" isn't a viable long term strategy.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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"Hope" isn't a viable long term strategy.
Rats!
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: "Hope" isn't a viable long term strategy.
hmmm....I hope I outlive that a**hole across the street so I can dance on his grave.
So you are saying I am wasting my time?
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