I have a Seagate external drive that experienced some kind of failure. I noticed it sounded as though it was spinning quite fast, but it didn't sound unusual. But later when I returned to the computer there was a couple of error messages that looked kind of like this...




Sadly I didn't grab screen shots, so I'm unsure of what exactly they said, but it was something along those lines.

I restarted the machine and reconnected the drive. Powers up, spins up, the light comes on, it sounds completely normal, and Windows even gives the notification sound that a USB device has been connected. But the drive doesn't appear in Disk Management. It's not listed at all, not even as unallocated. It literally doesn't list the disk itself.

However, it would show the Device Manager under drives. And in the menu bar "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" list. If I click to eject it from the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon, nothing happens.

In Device Manger properties, everything looks normal and it says it's working properly.

THEN I ran diskpart in the command prompt and did a "list volume” just to see if it would show there. It didn't...but now when I open Disk Management again, it does show up, but as "not initialized" and with the red down arrow. If I right-click and initialize, after a few minutes a Virtual Disk Manager window pops up and says "The device is not ready."

Even at this point it still won't show in CrystalDiskInfo to display the SMART data.

What's the issue, and how do I get it working properly?

Thanks for the feedback.
Anyone ever come across anything like this? In a preliminary search it appears this isn't an uncommon symptom at least. I've come across a few suggestions I'll try, like here:

https://www.makeuseof.com/answers/why-w ... nitialize/

Am just curious if anyone has any specific experience with it, particularly getting it working again.

For a visual of the "not initialized" and red down arrow in Disk Management see Disk 1 here:

That's actually not a screenshot of my drive, it's just one I found to illustrate the red arrow and "not initialized" display. My drive is much larger. Would that make a difference?

Finally got around to working it open. Was waiting on proper tools but was able to use others.

It's a Seagate ST5000DM000

I'd like to regain access for files, but it's not the end of the world if I can't.

You're thinking I shouldn't plug it directly by SATA and run MHDD to see if it picks up the drive and if I can scan it? Like I said it seems to power up and run fine, sounds completely normal. Just the "not initialized" issue. I suppose something could've broke on it's own, but there was no external physical damage. The drive wasn't ever touched or moved. I would think it's some kind of logical issue, no?