SATA External Hard Drive Not Recognized - BIOS, Windows 7, Ubuntu, Snow Leopard (the culprit?)

Question

So I plugged my external hard drive into my mac mini to copy some files over.

D'oh. It's formatted with NTFS.

I go to format as FAT32.

There is some kind of failure in the formatting (I don't remember what the error message was, I wish I did!)

So I give up and decide I'll try it another day with my Windows 7 Machine.

Computer Management doesn't see it.

Device Manager doesn't see.

Seagate Seatools doesn't see it.

The BIOS doesn't see it.

GParted doesn't see.

The Mac doesn't see it.

Of course, the culprit must be the connection.

I swap out the drive for another one.

Same enclosure, same USB cable, same power outlet - the drive shows up instantly.

Is it time to just give up on this drive? Should I stop buying OEM Hitachi terabyte drives?

Thank you!

Answer 1

It's very likely dead... (you could try if it works when connected directly to a SATA controller in your PC, but it probably won't make any difference).

I hope it's still under warranty?

And unless you know this is very common with this type of disk, you shouldn't stop buying them. A very small percentage of hard disks of all brands & types dies early, and maybe you're just unlucky it's yours. E.g. I had a WD disk die on me after 1 month, but the other one I bought together with it, and the replacement I got from WD (all the same type) are both still working well.