Seagate External Hard Drive not starting up, beeping noises

[pufut]

Hello all,

My Seagate 'Portable Backup Plus' Slim 1TB External Hard Drive is currently not showing up on any computer in my house, which are both Mac and Windows.

Upon plugging it in via USB it makes a quiet beeping sound (not a clicking sound) for a few seconds, which are usually regular/steady beeps but if I hold the drive sideways or upside down it can sound more like malfunctioned/broken beeping.

The drive is not mounting/spinning up at all, however the LED light remains on all while it is plugged into a computer.

I've installed SeaTools for Windows which works normally if the drive is unplugged, but once I plug it in and re-scan the program just becomes unresponsive.

I understand that this could be due to a power insufficiency linked to the USB cable (can't be a problem with 3 different computer's ports) so I'm going to order a replacement cable and see what that does. However, could it also be that there's a problem with the internals? i.e. stuck actuator arm?

If it helps, the drive appears in devices but not disk management. I'm not really sure what's happened, it was working a few weeks ago and is just over a year old. Should I open it up? Or is there a way to remove it from the casing and connect it through SATA to recover the data? That's all I'm really worried about at this point. The warranty is gone anyway so I wouldn't have a problem opening it up. I just want the data back really!

Any help would be really appreciated.

 

[Mark RM]

It sounds totally dead to me, it's not uncommon at all with portable drives.

You can remove it from the case, but be warned that some models don't actually have a SATA connector and actually use a genuine USB solution with no SATA bridge involved. I don't know which yours is, I'd open it.

 

[smorizio]

the beep your hearing is the dreaded stuck spindle beep. when you pull the drive you can try a light tap with screw driver handle see if it breaks free. if not if the data on the drive is important you need to have the drive rebuilt.

 

[KittyFish62]

Just wanted to point out that insufficient power from a USB port really only applies to old computers, namely computers from the 2000s that still had some USB 1.1 ports.

 

[Mark RM]

Just wanted to point out that insufficient power from a USB port really only applies to old computers, namely computers from the 2000s that still had some USB 1.1 ports.

A lot of older systems don't actually put up the 500ma designated by the USB2.0 spec. Measure it for yourself every time. Add in a single failing cap on the line to the USB power rail and you won't even achieve sufficient energy storage to startup drives that don't have a long enough built in delay to charge their own caps on their USB to SATA bridges .

etc,

So yeah it does apply.