my seagate expansion external hard drive is formally kaputt. It doesn't show up on my desktop or in disk utility. I am not sure what has happened. I can't do any first aid on it because it is not there. I have switched usb ports and tried on another laptop. Squat. Can anyone help with what happens next? I collect films and have hundreds of avi files on there.
I have several of these drives, 5 and 8 TB models. They all have standard SATA drives in them, Barracuda, Compute, or Archive models. I would say that there are 2 scenarios in play. One is easy to fix and retrieve your data and the other is that the disk is dead. I'm assuming you tried a different USB cable first.
1. The power supply or SATA to USB bridge electronics died. If this is the case, your data and drive are likely perfectly fine. You just need to extract the drive from the case and load it into a different external case or use something like a Voyager USB drive dock to see if it works. The cheap electronic boards in these power supplies/cases dying is not unusual. Search Google with "Seagate expansion drive shuck" and you should see a few YouTube videos on how to open the case up and disassemble. It's not too hard but is a bit of a pain because there are no screws and hard to gain enough leverage at the seam of the two plastic pieces to get in. I have done this myself on 3 drives with no issue. Take precautions to minimize static electricity damage when handling the bare drive.
2. The drive really did die. In this case the data is gone unless you want to pony up to attempt a data recovery service.
Since these drives are so cheap, I've taken up to keeping my Plex media on 3 of these and keep the other two offsite with my mom and brother each having one. I'd rather spend an extra $250 and not have to spend hours and hours ripping and compressing video again.
[doublepost=1547849831][/doublepost]Oh and just for the record, I did not open up the 3 drives because they died, it was because I wanted to load them into an OWC dual drive Firewire 800 enclosure since I have an older iMac that does not do USB 3 and Firewire 800 is much faster with these drives than USB 2. None of my Seagate Expansions have died yet (knock on wood).