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I have an old Seagate external hard drive that I would like to wipe clean and repurpose. However, it isn't showing up on any computer I try it on. I can't find it on my Mac, via disk utility or terminal (cmd: diskutil list) and I can't find it on my PC using Device Manager and the EaseUS program. I've tried rebooting my computers a few times with different settings to see if I can force the computer to find the drive, but with no luck.

It starts up, I can hear it spin when I plug it in. I'd love to back up some data on this drive, and don't care if I need to completely wipe it clean to do so. Any advice? Or is this drive lost forever?

Model info: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro: STAD500400 Cheers! Emily

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    On some of the older external drives from way back in the day, you would need some special cabling, e.g., a y-slitter, for them to work properly (the second one is for power). You might have one of these? Providing the model# might help.
    – Arctiic
    Commented Nov 15, 2019 at 10:51
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    I just sent a Seagate drive to a data recovery firm and they were not able to get the data back. If you cannot see it or recognize it, then it is probably gone.
    – anon
    Commented Nov 15, 2019 at 11:34
  • Added the model number! I hadn't thought of trying a different cable, but looking at the documentation for this model, it looks like one dock has a y-cable, and the other (the one I have) doesn't. But Thanks! I'll try to track a new cable down and see if that makes a difference. And yeah, if it's dead, it's dead. I just hate to get rid of it before I tried EVERYTHING. You know?
    – etgriffonage
    Commented Nov 15, 2019 at 13:48
  • @John A quality data recovery firm would have a clean room for platter removal, so even if a drive couldn't be recognized due to the hard drive's PCB/firmware, that's completely separate from the data written to the platters (granted, if it was a SSD you sent in, that's an entirely different issue altogether).
    – JW0914
    Commented Nov 15, 2019 at 16:10
  • My drive was a hard drive, not SSD, and the information could not be retrieved from the platters. Of course a clean room was used.
    – anon
    Commented Nov 15, 2019 at 16:39

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