Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Problems

[texmurphy]

I bought a Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB, powered by USB.

I took it out of the box and plugged it into my PC. It was recognised and all worked well. Great. I could access files and it worked as expected.

A little later, I was transferring data to the drive. It was a large amount of data and so I went away from the computer. When I came back, the drive was no longer listed in My Computer, where it had been before. So I disconnected the drive and reconnected it to see what happened. This did not fix it, in fact now Windows (Windows 7 64 bit) was telling me that it needed to be formatted, even though it had worked fine just hours earlier. I tried a few more times disconnecting and reconnecting, and I got a variety of problems. Sometimes it made a beeping sound, sometimes Windows would tell me 'the parameter is an error' and sometimes it just wouldn't recognise it at all.


Here's what I've tried so far:

I've taken the HD out and tried it again several times on the same computer. No improvement. I then used it on another computer, and it was giving me the same errors.

I don't have anything backed up on it, but I just wanted to check before I sent it back - this does sound like it's broken right?

Thanks.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, @texmurphy!

Unfortunately, you shouldn't have taken the HDD out of the original enclosure as it would void the warranty on the product. 🙁 You should try putting the HDD back and try connecting it using a different USB cable and port on your PC. If you have access to another computer, try plugging the external drive there as well again with a different cable, to see how it would pop up.
It's also highly recommended you use your HDD manufacturer's brand-specific diagnostic tool to check up on the health and SMART status.

If it fails any of the tests, contact your manufacturer's customer support for assistance and data recovery referrals. Using a professional data recovery company for assistance is your best chance to get the most of that large amount of data back.

Keep me posted with the troubleshooting & let me know if you have more questions!
SuperSoph_WD