Have an external 3tb seagate usb drive that all of a sudden stopped being recognized by the windows OS. Last time this happened I removed it from its enclosure and connected it with a usb to sata connector and it saw the drive enough to use data recovery software. This time however, it still does not show in drive management. After a few minutes I can hear a lot of head movement, not the clicking noise, but like it's really trying to read the drive. At this point the drive is recognized and assigned a drive letter. The data recovery software sees the drive and shows the 3tb partition and then it freezes. As long as the head noise occurs the drive letter is seen but the os is frozen trying to access it. The noise stops and the drive letter goes away and just quietly spins again. I noticed some corrosion on the pcb board but nothing obviously smoked. I can post pictures of the drive, firmware level, pcb board etc later. Unfortunately I cannot spend the money on data recovery services so I'm looking for a potential diy solution. I hear this place has a great collection of experts and success stories.
Based on the brief description does anyone know where to start as far as replacing components?

use ddrescue in linux and image the drive as soon as possible

ok thanks, I'll check on my linux laptop about getting that installed. Hopefully it will see the drive in order to image it or pull files from it.

Even worse, a 3TB DM series drive that is no longer detected. The less you power the drive on, the better the chances that it will still be recoverable by a data recovery pro, not a local computer shop or the kid in Computer Science who lives up the street.

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Luke
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I hear these drives are atrocious. My mistake for buying another one after the first had died on me. I didn't know the extent of their crappulance until researching after this one died.

From the sounds and behavior I'm guessing that it's something physical with the heads. If it was an option I'd send it to the experts and wouldn't even mess with it. As it is I have to see what I can do about pulling files off there before chucking it in the bin.

Does this look normal? It seems like several of the connectors are corroded...

You can try cleaning them with a soft pencil eraser, but it's very unlikely to make any difference.

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