Member Avatar for ibemeganavery

I have a Seagate 500GB external hard drive that has been put in a new casing after some wires in the original came loose. I only got it back two days ago.

So today I plugged it into my macbook and everything was fine, and then suddenly the warning/error window pops up saying that it's not been ejected safely. I hadn't touched the acutal hard drive or the wire or anything. I thought it might've overheated or something so I unplugged it, left it for a few minutes and then plugged it back in and nothing happened. The light on the actual hard drive's turning on but that's it, the laptop's not registering it. I've tried it on my mums windows laptop and it does the same. It lights up but no icon appears on the desktop.

I've also looked for it in disk utility and there's nothing there either.

Edited by ibemeganavery
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Dani AI

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Symptoms like a powered LED but no entry in Disk Utility (and the same behavior on a Windows laptop) usually mean the drive never enumerates as a USB mass storage device. With the drive recently moved to a new casing, the enclosure or its USB-SATA bridge, the USB cable/power, or the enclosure's power circuitry are the likeliest culprits — not necessarily the platters themselves. That said, a failing drive electronics board or a mechanical fault can produce the same result, so proceed carefully and avoid any operation that writes to the drive.

Safe, practical troubleshooting and next steps (avoid formatting or initializing the disk):

  1. Basic checks first: swap the USB cable and try different USB ports or another computer (desktop preferred). If the drive is a 3.5" model, confirm the enclosure has its external power connected.

  2. Listen and note behavior: smooth spin-up is better; repeated clicking, grinding, or no spin are signs of mechanical failure — stop powering the drive if those sounds appear.

  3. Check whether the OS even sees a device (low-risk, read-only checks). On macOS run:

    diskutil list
system_profiler SPUSBDataType

    On Windows open Disk Management and Device Manager. If a device shows but is unmounted, do not initialize or format it.

  4. If the device is not visible to either OS, remove the drive from the enclosure and test with a known-good powered SATA-to-USB adapter or connect it to a desktop SATA port. That isolates the enclosure/bridge from the drive itself.

  5. If/when the drive becomes visible, make a sector-by-sector image to a separate drive before attempting file recovery (tools such as GNU ddrescue are standard). Work from the image, not the original.

This builds on ’s repair-suspicion and refines and ’s points: recovery software only after imaging, and try a different enclosure/adapter to rule out the casing. If the drive makes mechanical noises or is still invisible after a direct SATA test, power it down and consult a professional data-recovery service to avoid further damage.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

Bad repair?

Member Avatar for tompatrick

Try to download a free recovery program on your drive and let it scan your hard drive (have some hope it will locate the ex-HDD).

Member Avatar for macmad 
Not good. please check "About this mac" Located under the apple. Run the system report and check to see if it is connected via the hardware. You state that you connected it to a window's machine so I will go with a USB connection. Just look at USB under hardware and see if you spot your HD. (Hint. Look for Seagate).
 I doubt that it will show up from the sounds of your problem. Send it back for a new enclosure, or get a new enclosure and drop the drive in. I do think that your data is intact and recoverable, Just not in that inclosure.
    There is a possability that it will show up. This indicated that the boot block on the drive is corrupt. In that case you need some serious diagnostic software. Tech tool pro (TT6) comes to mind. TT6 will mount the drive if it can be seen by the Mac. Copy what software you can get off of it and reformat the drive. You should be good to go, but I would **not** trust that inclosure. You can buy a nonane enclosure for $20.00 on ebay these days
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