photobug.2

Thank You

rfmaude41 Loc: Lancaster, Texas (DFW area)

FWIW: I have been using Seagate Enterprise class dive for many, many years (including all of my RAID 0+1 (RAID 10) sets. Never even had a single failure. Several of them are as old a 8 years. You get what you pay for. Yes, they (enterprise class drives) are more expensive; really good ones cost about double when compared to the "run of the mill" types.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 With HDs (like most everything else), you get what you pay for. Seagate, like most manufacturers, has made some great drives and had some monumental failures. I still have Seagate SCSI Barracuda 4GB (yes, that’s GB, not TB) drives that will run fine, and must be 20 years old, and at one time, the 15,000 RPM Cheetah was the high performance speed king. Of course, there was also the Cheetah 7 FibreChannel drive fiasco, where they took back reportedly over a million drives under warranty (but they stood behind their product and made it good). It all depends on the model and at what facility they were made.

k2edm Loc: FN32AD

there is such a hugh market for external drives that no company would risk their rep by marketing junk, it could put them out of business... therefore anyone of them safe to buy... IMHO Ed

therwol Loc: USA

I've used at least a 20 consumer grade Seagate and Western Digital external hard drives for backup. They all still work fine. They're only plugged in when transferring data for backups. I do recognize that these things may fail, and that's why all of my data, including photos and video, is backed up in triplicate.

11bravo

You probably have tried these, but just in case:

Several points of failure of an external, the most likely being the HDD. However, there are other possibilities: power brick, cable, or internal chips.

Any lights on the external case? As in, is it getting power? If there are lights, have you tried changing the connecting cable, and trying a different port? Have you checked the computer's device manager to see if there are any "unknown" usb devices?

Given it's broken, I'd carefully crack the case and remove the HDD inside. You could try and install as an internal drive if you have the power and sata ports available. But I find it easier to use a toaster style dock when troubleshooting. I happen to have had good luck with Orico 6619 docks (just make sure it's the usb3 external connection).

https://www.newegg.com/orico-6619us3-us-bk/p/0VN-0003-000W7?Description=6619US3-BK&cm_re=6619US3-BK-_-9SIA1DS3N87773-_-Product&quicklink=true

I've also used a Harbor Freight mechanic's stethoscope to listen if the HDD is spinning (true).

If the computer can now "see" the drive, even if it's seen as "RAW" (unformatted), all is not lost. First thing to do is CLONE the HDD to another HDD, freeware version of Macrium Reflect works fine. Then you can attempt to recover anything on the CLONE (you want to minimize stress on the original failed HDD). I've used GetDataBack Pro (paid):

https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

You can try the trial to see if there is anything recoverable, then pay to recover. I've used it successfully (thankfully not often), mainly to rebuild lost MFT's. I can vouch for the lifetime license (I originally had the NTFS version, and when they came out with the Pro, successfully installed Pro using my NTFS license). During recovery, patience is a virtue - it's not fast (4TB took a day).

Granted, if the drive is dead, then it's dead. I'd just make sure it's truly dead and gone.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

May be true for reputable companies.
There are other types of company out there.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

One SAMSUNG T5 2TB 2.50" USB 3.1 V-NAND Portable SSD MU-PA2T0B/AM $280.00 OR
Three 5tb drives, WD Black 5TB P10 Game Drive Portable External Hard Drive for PS4/Xbox One/PC/Mac USB 3.2 (WDBA3A0050BBK-WESN) $285.00

That's 2tb of backup space or 15tb backup space.
There is additional safety in numbers.

11bravo

Note the Rosewill RX-358 is now on sale from Newegg, $35.99:
https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rx-358-u3c-blk/p/N82E16817182247?Item=N82E16817182247

That small fan keeps your drive cool...

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Oh my, if only that were the case. Companies have been marketing unreliable products (junk) for years and are still in business. Case in point: Seagate marketed a 4TB drive a year or two ago that Backblaze had a 34% failure rate the first year, and they are one of the two major surviving HD companies. I could go on... except for rare bargains, you get what you pay for.

And even the best of companies have occasional failures - a few examples. Some companies fixed the issue regardless of warranty status and some did not. All are still in business and well regarded companies.

Seagate took back approximately a million Cheetah 7 FibreChannel drives for massive early failures.

GM, especially Cadillac, marketed a Diesel engine some years ago that was a POS and a dismal failure. Failure coverage after warranty expiration typically depended on the dealer.

Mercedes Benz built engines for several years that had an improperly heat treated intermediate shaft gear that only failed after ~60,000 miles that required hundreds of thousands of engines to need a $4,000-$6,000 repair. It was not covered under warranty and resulted in a class action lawsuit.

Porsche had a known intermediate shaft bearing failure that affected tens to hundreds of thousands of 911 engines. To Porsche’s credit, they repaired the engines for original owners, even after the warranty expired, but only covered subsequent owners for 25 % of this $5000-$10,000 fix.

Canon has a known ribbon cable failure on their MKI 24-105L lenses. To my knowledge, there was no recall or compensation for owners,

Nikon had a well known oil contamination issue on the D600. To their credit, the either repaired or replaced all of them.

I could go on...

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 Good advice.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

An alternative, BUT really only 5TB usable if you’re going to mirror them all to get that “safety in numbers”, and 10x the size (for all 3), external power supply(s) necessary to run them all, not to mention a USB hub to connect them to a single port, 1/5 the BW, hundreds of times longer access time and very vulnerable to shock and vibe. Not to mention the fact that just because the case is black, doesn’t mean the drive inside is anything other than their cheapest drive they make with no fan cooling. Just a “kludgy” setup. If you’re going that way, buy two enterprise quality HDs, put them in a fan cooled case and mirror them.

BTW, the correct price for the Samsung is $236, and the WD is $95.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

Three usb drives connected to a powered hub doesn't that up much room.
WD Black labeled are their high performance drives and they don't use external Power supply.
The hub yes.
Over the many years I have retired many drives because I outgrew them.
Not because they went bad. They've been banged, dropped, smashed and yet I still have a pair of 60gb Seagate drives that work just fine. OK, OK. They can't hold much!
The OP doesn't sound like he is doing anything but using the drives for backup storage.
Nothing "kludgy", and not everybody is into or knows how to assemble a drive in an external case.

BTW. The SAMSUNG T5 2TB 2.50" USB 3.1 V-NAND Portable SSD MU-PA2T0B/AM sold at Newegg is $279.00.
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-t5-2tb/p/N82E16820147644

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

There is a difference between a WD Black HD and a “Black” external drive. The cheap external WD drives are called “black” presumably because they have a black case - it tells you nothing about the quality of the drive inside, which WD never specifies, but you can bet it’s the cheapest drive they make. Putting a drive into an external case takes way less than 5 minutes. You plug the connectors into the drive, and screw the case closed - lots easier than what you’re suggesting and 5x as reliable.

If you want a really good spinning disk, the answer is the HGST (now owned by WD) Ultrastar enterprise class drive - consistently one of the highest or the highest reliability drive over years of testing.

Here’s the link to the Samsung pricing. This is Amazon, but lots of people have them it this price:https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-Portable-SSD-MU-PA2T0B/dp/B073H4GPLQ/ref=asc_df_B073H4GPLQ/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309743296044&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18223191605736666839&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9009733&hvtargid=pla-469719575237&psc=1

You can always buy 2 (or maybe even 3) Geo metros for the price of one Cadillac or Lexus - which would you prefer to drive? You spend many hundreds or more typically thousands of $ for cameras and lenses to do just one thing- produce data, but you want to trust that data, which is often irreplaceable, to the cheapest storage you can find?

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

'There is a difference between a WD Black HD and a “Black” external drive.
The cheap external WD drives are called “black” presumably because they have a black case'

They are called "Black" because they are the higher performing drives.
Not because of the color of the case.
WD sells drives labeled, Red, Blue, Black, Gold.

As for their cheap usb drive's, non-black, I have a dozen of them, 2tb.
Gave away a number of smaller ones, less then 2tb and never had a problem with any of them.
Did have a problem once with a Verbatim external drive.
Turned out to be a interface card problem. Not the Toshiba HDA inside.

Yes it is easy for some of us to put a drive together.
Properly setup a LINN LP12 turntable, align a phono cartridge.
Repair, rebuild, field service an IBM Selective I/O typewriter hooked up to a word processor.
Build and repair computers and laser, band, hammer printers. etc,etc.
But I/we don't know anything about the capabilities of the OP.

'If you want a really good spinning disk, the answer is the HGST (now owned by WD) Ultrastar
enterprise class drive - consistently one of the highest or the highest reliability drive over years of testing.
but you want to trust that data, which is often irreplaceable, to the cheapest storage you can find?'

That is why I have 5 identical backed up drives for my files using a 7 port hub and a bunch of 4 port hubs.
Then another 5 drives for my backed up music files.
With multiple drives in a fire resistant safe.

Maybe the OP will let us in on his or her desire to play computer geek. :-)