Seagate HDD has LED on and is whirring but not showing anywhere on computer

[Stanny boy]

The drive connects through a USB and does not need external power source. It seems alive as the LED is on and the machine is whirring. However it does not show up on my computer or the device manager or the remove safely hardware button. Tried seatools. Any other options for it to be read by the computer?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Look in Disk Management to see if it's shown there without model name or drive-letter.
If it is, assign (add) a drive-letter to it and wait a about 15-20 seconds.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-add-remove-drive-letter#1TC=windows-7

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Stanny boy,

If the HDD is a brand new one, you most probably need to go to Disk Management and initialize, partition and format it.
If you have been using the HDD for a while and just disappeared, the first thing you may want to try is to connect it with a different USB cable. If the issue persists, you need to go to Disk Management and see whether it has a letter assigned as well as healthy partitions and file system. If it doesn't have a drive letter, you need to assign one as Phillip Corcoran already suggested. If it has corrupted partitions or file system, you may need to use some data/partition recovery software in order to retrieve the data(if you need it).

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

 

[fzabkar]

@Stanny, can you see the drive with USBDeview or UVCView?

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/a/eba1050f-a31d-436b-9281- 92cdfeae4b45/UVCView.x64.exe
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe