Seagate external HDD suddenly shows as uninitialized/unallocated; had one BitLocker partition; SMART OK

I have a Seagate 2.5" external HDD (one of these https://www.seagate.com/products/extern ... al-drives/). It has previously had an intermittent issue where the partitions would disappear from Windows Explorer, but unplugging/replugging the USB cable would make them return.

Today the partitions appeared briefly and then disappeared. Reconnecting no longer brings them back.

Disk Management now shows the disk as Not Initialized / Unallocated. DiskPart detects the physical disk but reports no volumes.

CrystalDiskInfo reports SMART health as Good. The following SMART attributes are all 0:

Reallocated Sector Count
Current Pending Sector Count
Uncorrectable Sector Count
CRC Error Count

The drive LED glows, it spins up, makes no unusual sounds.

One of the partitions contains BitLocker-encrypted data, and I have the recovery key.

I tried different USB cable/port and computer.
I tried testdisk and it doesn't see partition table. When analyzing it just says
Analyzing cylinder xxx/243200
Read error at (xxxx/yy/zz) for every single value (I stopped it after a while)

I also tried other data recovery software and while it's scanning I see no read/write activity on the task manager. What's going on here?I have not initialized, formatted, or run CHKDSK on the drive.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks

start by booting up a Linux Live CD and try to create a binary copy of the drive.

You might want to get a better enclosure such as once of the low cost USB-C type for 2.5" disks. These are also less likely to be at issue. I have several of them with assorted disks and SATA SSD stuffed in them.

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USB 3.5" enclosures are $19 USD postage paid from China, I own several