[jeff k]

I have an external Seagate I use for Time Machine.
It usually mounts fine and is on the desktop.

Now though, it's not there, and not in DU.

I have restarted the computer, and also, unplugged everything from the drive and back, still, no go. Out of ideas.

Yet it's still there with blue light humming and seems ok.

[subego]

Hook us up with more details. What drive enclosure? How big is the drive? What Mac? Also, how handy are you?

Unfortunately, the endgame here likely involves yanking the drive from the enclosure.


Other questions:

Are you just trying to save the drive, or what's on it?
How much are you willing to spend to fix it?

[jeff k]

Thanks, it's a 5 year old 750GB Seagate drive.

[subego]

If you don't need the data, you may want to consider taking that drive out behind the barn and getting a new one.

A 2TB WD Green and an enclosure is about $100. Shave off $10-$20 if you go 1TB. Shave off another $10-20 if you reuse the Seagate enclosure (assuming that's not what's broken).

[besson3c]

If Disk First Aid can't repair the drive, chances are (and perhaps even if DU can repair it), your drive has gone bad, like subego says. I agree with the rest of his advice in terms of replacing the drive and perhaps recycling the enclosure. Chances are the enclosure is fine unless it was dropped or something. SATA drives go bad all the time.

[jeff k]

Thanks guys, did not think of repairing, but you cannot repair if it wont show up in DU, right? can you somehow?
Not a big deal, can discard it, have others in the closet that can take it's place.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by jeff k 

Thanks guys, did not think of repairing, but you cannot repair if it wont show up in DU, right? can you somehow?
Not a big deal, can discard it, have others in the closet that can take it's place.

If it's appearing but not appearing as a mounted disk you can, but if it's not appearing at all you can't.

[P]

Originally Posted by subego 

A 2TB WD Green and an enclosure is about $100. Shave off $10-$20 if you go 1TB. Shave off another $10-20 if you reuse the Seagate enclosure (assuming that's not what's broken).

Reusing a five year old OEM power supply does not sound like a safe choice. The big OEMs cut every corner they can to save cents.

[Waragainstsleep]

Enclosures are all cheap and crappy. They die all the time these days.

[Spheric Harlot]

Move the hard drive itself to a different enclosure and see if it works.

I had two Seagate drives (just the disks, not the enclosures) of similar vintage die on me within days of each other, and a friend had a production drive that equally failed to mount.
In all these cases, the hardware seemed fine; the drive spun up and power was okay — it merely refused to mount.

Turned out to be a serial firmware problem that many Seagate drives from that era run into eventually. No options other than a data recovery service (in my friend's case, Seagate actually recovered his data for free).

[akent35]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Move the hard drive itself to a different enclosure and see if it works.

I had two Seagate drives (just the disks, not the enclosures) of similar vintage die on me within days of each other, and a friend had a production drive that equally failed to mount.
In all these cases, the hardware seemed fine; the drive spun up and power was okay — it merely refused to mount.

Turned out to be a serial firmware problem that many Seagate drives from that era run into eventually. No options other than a data recovery service (in my friend's case, Seagate actually recovered his data for free).

That's actually an excellent suggestion. I had a 4 year old 1 TB Seagate Drive inside a former MacPro, and the machine refused to boot. I tried everything to even "see" the drive (specifically, Target Disk Mode), but nothing worked. Turns out something must have happened with the mother board (only an educated guess). So, I took the hard drive out (along with the DVD drive; I could not even boot from it), placed both of them in separate external enclosures, and they worked fine. (I subsequently purchased a Mac Mini, and both devices are connected to it, via USB).

I'm not sure if this will help, but maybe worth a try (especially if you can save the data). I have an external Seagate 500 gig drive (purchased about 5 years ago, with a 7200 rpm Seagate drive inside), and it has 2 Firewire 800 ports ( I am using one of them for the connection to my Mac Mini), and 1 USB. If your drive has such multiple ways of connecting it to your machine, you might want to try another port on the drive (and/or another port on your machine).

Again, not sure if this will do any good, but it's something simple to try. Hopefully, there is nothing wrong with the ports on your machine.