GEngel-usmc Loc: Spencerport NY - I miss Lakeland, FL

Trix, agree, but Jerry’s 2.5” MacBook drive is an internal drive, which would need an external power source to be able to feel any centrifugal rotation of the drive in your hand. Reading on, I now believe he said he heard some spinning noise, just no click, click of the data read/write armature. Always interesting! Still dead though.
‘DriveDx’ software for Mac is what I use for daily auto interrogation of my iMacs drives. Sends me an email if suspected problems.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

But if you do, unless you have access to a clean room and the appropriate skill set, copy everything you want off the drive (if you can) ASAP and toss it. Personally, I would never open a drive, but a good hard slap with the palm of your hand on the flat surface of the drive is an acceptable alternative if the head is stuck in the debris of the outer tracks or the platter isn’t spinning. Another last ditch method is to put the drive in a sealed ziplock and place it in the freezer for awhile, then let it return to a normal temperature and try it. I’m not endorsing this at all because of the possibility of condensation on the platter, but if you’ve tried all the normal methods and want to try one last thing to recover the data (or pay a service north of 1K$) before tossing the drive, then you can try it, but I would try all the previously suggested diagnostics first.

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

Some Mac products use drives that need an adapter to use elseware.
If your case is a USB3, plugging into a USB2 port might not have the power to run it.
Try: "Control panel > All Control Panel Items > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management. If it's plugged in right and working, this should show it. Sometimes you need to do this first, anyway.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

"Windows cannot find FDisk. Make sure you typed it correctly."

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Nope! Doesn't see it.

GEngel-usmc Loc: Spencerport NY - I miss Lakeland, FL

For Windows users replying to Jerry:
Macs use a different disk format than Windows, so your Windows experience isn’t working for Jerry here.
Macs format either APFS (Mac OS 13.0 or later); APFS Encrypted; APFS Case-sensitive; APFS Case-sensitive, Encrypted; Mac OS Extended (using Mac OS 10.12 or earlier. Then, as above, case sensitive and/or encryption or not.
Lastly, a Mac or partition thereof, can be partitioned and formatted for either ms-dos (32 GB or less) or ExFat (over 32
GB)
In conclusion, a Mac and it’s format utility software can recognize Apple and Windows formatted drives; Windows OS and it’s fdisk, ckdisk stuff doesn’t work. That’s Windows stuff. Apple will let a User get into the OS Terminal Mode, but why? Their software just works. Playing with any OS internal software structure can be deadly and expensive. Just sayin’ - been there for customers many times. Different OS’s folks...

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

First, MS-DOS is an operating system. I think you meant FAT (32 GB or less).

Windows native format is NTFS (not FAT or ex-FAT). MacOS can read NTFS partitions, but natively can't write to them (disk operations)

Although not native to Windows, there is a software solution that allows Windows to read and write to APFS partitions. It was developed for users/networks that have mixed Windows and macOS workstations.


"IF" the external drive was formatted via a MAC with either FAT or ex-FAT, A Windows operating system would be able to detect AND read it, therefore all disk utilities from a Windows machine would work.
--
Command-Line (OS terminal) on pretty much every modern operating system is far more powerful than GUI based tools and applications. The reason "playing" with command-line is dangerous (specifically Linux and probably MAC as well), is that if you are a superuser or root, the system assumes all input is intentional and there are very few, if any in most instances of a sanity check (e.g. "Are you sure you want to delete that").

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Exactly. Regardless of what file system the drive is formatted with, a drive is a drive. If you plug an APFS or HFS+ formatted drive into a Windows machine, as long as the HW drive interface is correct, the Windows machine will see it in storage manager. Depending on the FS, it may show as unformatted or unknown format (or it may be able to read but not write the drive), but it will be visible IF the drive and the interface is good.