External hard drive with 4 TB of photos: Hello guys, I have several hard drives connected to my computer, one of them is a Seagate Expansion drive, basically an external drive.

ialvarez50

Hello guys,

I have several hard drives connected to my computer, one of them is a Seagate Expansion drive, basically an external drive. Yesterday the drive stop being recognized by my computer, I am concerned because I have about 120,000 photos in it. I change the USB 3 cable 3 times now and no, its not connecting. Any recommendation to recover all my photos?

Thank you in advance.

SS319

Stop digging the hole!

Find a reputable professional computer technician and you will see every one of those 120,000 photos again.

Do it yourself and ... well, good luck on that!

ialvarez50

Thank you friend, I will do exactly that.

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

Just go to your backup. You do have a backup, don't you?

ialvarez50

I do but not the RAW files just TIF and JPG. I need to recover all the RAW files.

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

One thing to try before you head to the computer techs. Have you tried plugging the drive into a different USB port on your computer?

Andy

ialvarez50

Hello Andy, yes I have. I tried every port in my computer and I change USB cables 3 times also. Thank you for your time.

Racmanaz Loc: Sunny Tucson!

ialvarez50 wrote:

Hello Andy, yes I have. I tried every port in my computer and I change USB cables 3 times also. Thank you for your time.

Try this to see if it helps.

https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/external-hard-drive-is-not-detected-recover-data/

jcboy3

ialvarez50 wrote:

Hello guys,

I have several hard drives connected to my computer, one of them is a Seagate Expansion drive, basically an external drive. Yesterday the drive stop being recognized by my computer, I am concerned because I have about 120,000 photos in it. I change the USB 3 cable 3 times now and no, its not connecting. Any recommendation to recover all my photos?

Thank you in advance.

Find a service tech that can pull the drive and try to recover files. If that doesn’t work, then ship it to a recovery service. That, unfortunately, will cost you a LOT of money.

And in the meantime, buy some big drives and backup. Then backup again.

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!

Get some software to backup automatically.

Drives will fail.

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

ialvarez50 wrote:

I do but not the RAW files just TIF and JPG. I need to recover all the RAW files.

Aren't the RAW files the ones you would want to back up? You can always recreate TIFFs and/or JPEGs from the RAWs.

ialvarez50

Thank you Racmanaz, I will try that link you sent.

hcmcdole

Hard drives are cheap today. As others have said, multiple backups are the rule today. I took two 4 TB drives to Thailand last year to back up all my photos. One drive crashed so as soon as I got home I went and bought an identical drive and did a copy from the one good drive to the new one. I also have a network drive connected to our router so it gets all the photos as well.

catchlight.. Loc: Wisconsin USA- Halden Norway

hcmcdole wrote:

Hard drives are cheap today. As others have said, multiple backups are the rule today. I took two 4 TB drives to Thailand last year to back up all my photos. One drive crashed so as soon as I got home I went and bought an identical drive and did a copy from the one good drive to the new one. I also have a network drive connected to our router so it gets all the photos as well.

Rename the drive. This may help for recognition.

https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/knowledge-base/article/how-to-rename-an-external-usb-drive/

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Here are lots of things to try.
https://www.google.com/search?q=computer+does+not+see+external+drive&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS716US717&oq=computer+does+not+see+external+drive&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.9167j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

You can also try a program in Windows called diskpart - very good.
https://www.google.com/search?q=diskpart&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS716US717&oq=diskpart&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65l2j0l3.3735j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

sclay1234 Loc: Ocean county nj

I have a 1 t tb Seagate and does the same thing . It is going bad, I shut everything down for a few min then turn it on that usually works.
Scott