seagate hardrive not working

Question

Level 1

8 points

seagate hardrive not working

Hi there

I brought a seagate harddrive this week. Its been working fine and I've been sorting folders on it. But now i plug it in and it won't register it. i can't find it on my macbook. I've also looked in the disc utility bit but now not listing. I've tried both my usb ports but the same on each.

the blue light comes on the seagate but doesn't flash like it did before then after about 5-10minutes the bluelight goes off.

any ideas? I've been doing hours of work on it sorting photos and now I think its all lost. ??

thank you

laura

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on May 2, 2016 5:18 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 2, 2016 5:25 AM in response to lozzajim

How is the Seagate formatted? Did you put the photos on it yourself? with the mac or another computer?

Reply

Answer 2

kahjot

Level 4

2,462 points

May 2, 2016 6:32 AM in response to lozzajim

It is worth trying a different USB cable.

I never buy name brand externals. I get the drive I want and install it in an enclosure myself. The reason is that the big name external drives are often housed in mediocre enclosures that are difficult to open. Ideally you'd just pop open the enclosure and try that drive in a dock or another enclosure to determine whether the problem is with the drive itself, or with the enclosure.

I recently went through this with an older Seagate external that someone in the household had gotten free. It mounted intermittently or not at all. It was making little beeping noises. I tried a different cable, but it didn't help. I had to pry open the PITA enclosure and extract the drive. Luckily I had some tools on hand that were suitable for jimmying the thing open. I put the drive in a nice little Oyen Digital enclosure and the drive was immediately restored to health.

Reply

Answer 3

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

May 2, 2016 7:06 AM in response to lozzajim

Besides trying another cable

- Is the drive self-powered, that only powered by the USB bus? If so it could be that the USB port does not provided enough power. You can try a powered USB hub. You can also get a USB pigtail that takes power from to USB ports to the single USB port on the drive like this one.

StarTech.com® 1' USB Y Male To Micro-B Male Cable For External Hard Drive, Black

- Does it show when connected to another computer?

- Does it show in System Profiler under USB? You should see the chipset in the enclosure as well as the HD itself

OS X: About System Information and System Profiler - Apple Support

Reply