Solved! 2TB Seagate External USB Drive Not Showing in Disk Management

[plumleyhd]

My external USB hard drive (Seagate 2TB) suddenly stopped working.
The light is on and the disk is spinning, but my computer doesn't see it; not even in Disk Management.
Recommended Actions:

1. Try another USB port (nope), 2. Try another computer (nope),
2. Check Device Manager to see any (!)Unrecognized hardware indicating a bad driver and reinstall (nope).
3. Check Disk Management for a Disk0 with Unallocated Space (Initialize and use Recovery Software). (nope).

Because my drive isn't showing in Disk Management, Seagate says to consider DATA RECOVERY. (expensive).

The following steps fixed my hard drive:

1. Open the hard black plastic case by prying apart the case at the joint (there's 2-sided tape in there too)
2. Remove Internal Harddrive from case.
3. Peel silver tape off USB connector.
4. Pull USB connector and attached LG1M15469 pcb board from the Metal Harddrive's SATA connector.
5. Connect Internal Harddrive to your computer with a SATA-to-USB Adapter, or install it into a Desktop.

 

[hang-the-9]

Yep, removing the drive from the enclosure as long as the drive has standard SATA connectors and the enclosure does not use encryption, is a good trouble-shooting step if you are not worried about the drive warranty.

Also don't keep single copies of your data on the external drive, backups only.