Seagate Expansion Portable Drive Not Recognised

[saymyusername]

I've had a 2TB Seagate Expansion Portable Drive for a bit less than a year now, and it's not being recognised any more. This started when I bought a Chromebook (Samsung Chromebook 3) as a temporary solution when my laptop died.

 

• After around a week of using to transfer media files back and forth between the hard drive and the Chromebook, I plugged in the hard drive and after a while I get a message "This device cannot be opened because its file system was not recognised.", plus the option to format (see attached).
• In Windows 10, on a different laptop which had previously also worked fine with the drive, under Disk Management the drive shows up as 'Disk 1, Unknown, Not Initialised", and won't appear in File Explorer as usual. It does show in Devices and Printers, as an "Unspecified" device called "Expansion".
• I tried replacing the hard drive enclosure with a functioning one.
• Using different USB ports.
• The disk had not been dropped prior to this occurring.
• The drive is spinning when it is plugged in, with no clicking or any sort of unusual noise.
• The indicator light, which is usually flashing or static blue while in use, no longer comes on.

 

I know this issue is somehow related to the Chromebook - I have an SD card in the Chromebook at all times, and use it for the exact same purpose as the malfunctioning hard drive. A few weeks after the 2TB drive started behaving this way, the SD card came up with the exact same issue. I just left it, and when I went a few days later to format the SD card, it had miraculously reappeared and was working as normal, with all the data intact.

 

Does anybody have any ideas? I do have the option to format in ChromeOS, but would rather not as I'd like to recover the data if possible (this was my backup). Thanks for taking the time to read!

[Razor Blade]

Was the old hard drive enclosure not working or you weren't sure? 

 

I'm not familiar with ChromeOS but a quick Google search turned up GPT which Windows 10 should be able to read....should.

Initializing the disk in windows isn't the same as formatting it, however with an "iffy" disk there is a chance of the partition being corrupted. Have you tried plugging into a Linux machine to see if it could mount it? If not you can just make a live disk on a thumb drive and plug it into just about any computer to see. Ubuntu or Mint would be what I would try.

 

 

 

@seagate_surfer

[saymyusername]

@Razor Blade

 

I wasn't sure if the enclosure was working since the light was off, so that's why I tried switching it out. It's back in the original enclosure now though.

 

Yes, I forgot to mention I had previously been using the hard drive on both my Chromebook, and my girlfriend's Windows laptop, without any issue until this point. I haven't tried using Linux no, but I'll give it a try. I've never used Linux before so if you know any good tutorials or such to explain how to do that, that would be great! Thanks for the info.

[Razor Blade]

Don't be afraid of Linux, it is a GUI just like Windows or ChromeOS. I'm sure if you're able to use ChromeOS, you'll be able to use Linux.

 

You might want to do this on your girlfriend's laptop as I'm not sure how in ChromeOS.

Download Rufus https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Download Linux  https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

 

Use Rufus to mount the ISO onto a USB drive. 

 

Now you should be able to use that USB drive to boot into Ubuntu.

 

[saymyusername]

@Razor Blade

 

https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#0

 

Is this the sort of thing you mean? I'm not sure I understand correctly, but then use this USB as the boot drive, and see if the hard drive will work?

 

Edit: didn't see your response before posting this. Thanks, that clears it up.

[saymyusername]

@Razor Blade

 

So I managed to get Ubuntu working. Plugged in the drive, and it didn't behave any differently. It still spins, no strange noises, no indicator LED. Still no files as far as I could tell, based on the Ubuntu "Drives" manager. See attached image.

 

 

What should I do next?

[Razor Blade]

You could try SeaTools

https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

 

See if it is able to check the drive's condition. It could help narrow down whether this is a hardware failure or possibly a corrupted drive.

[ZacoAttaco]

Would some sort of hard drive partition software help?

 

MiniTool Partition Wizard

https://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

 

It can let you see what file system the drive is using and has some other useful features that might help.

 

Also Defraggler by CCleaner can analyze the health of a drive and benchmark it's performance.

[saymyusername]

@Razor Blade@ZacoAttaco2

 

I've just tried both of your suggestions, and the drive wasn't found by either of the programs. Anything else I could try?