Plug the drive in and listen and watch for two minutes before touching anything. Does the light come on? Can you feel it gently spin up? Is it silent, or is it making a noise it never used to make? The answers matter, because 'not showing up' covers three very different situations: a connection problem (cheap fix), a software problem (careful fix), and a hardware failure (lab fix).
If the drive is clicking, buzzing, beeping or repeatedly spinning up and down, stop here. Those are mechanical symptoms — most often failed read/write heads or a seized motor, especially if the drive was dropped or knocked. Every extra minute of power risks scoring the platters that hold your data. Unplug it and jump to the last section of this guide.
Try a different USB cable — the supplied cables on portable drives fail constantly, and Seagate and WD drives are notorious for it. Then try a different port (plug straight into the computer, not through a hub or the front-panel sockets), and if you can, a different computer entirely. Desktop-style drives with their own power brick need that brick working: if the drive doesn't spin at all, try a compatible adapter before assuming the worst.
On Windows, right-click Start and open Disk Management. If the drive appears there but not in File Explorer, it may simply have lost its drive letter — right-click the partition and choose 'Change Drive Letter and Paths'. If it shows as RAW, 'unallocated' or asks to be initialised, the partition or file system has corrupted: your data is likely still there, but do NOT initialise, format or let Windows 'fix' it — each of those writes over the very structures a recovery rebuilds from.
On Mac, open Disk Utility and click View → Show All Devices. If the physical drive is listed but the volume won't mount, don't rush to Erase (it deletes) and be careful with First Aid on a drive you can hear struggling — repair tools make sick drives work harder. A drive that mounts on Windows but not Mac (or vice versa) is usually just formatted for the other system — the data is fine; read it on the system it was made for.
If your Seagate drive's light is on but nothing appears anywhere, and it isn't making unusual noises, the USB bridge board or firmware is a common culprit — recoverable, but not by swapping cables. And if you're tempted to crack open the enclosure and connect the bare drive inside: don't bother with most modern WD My Passport and Elements drives. The USB board encrypts data at the hardware level, so the bare drive shows gibberish in another enclosure — a lab works with or around the original bridge to read it properly.
Either way, resist the urge to keep plugging the drive in 'to see if it comes back'. Intermittent detection that gets rarer over days is a failure curve, not a mood — each attempt is one more spin of degrading hardware.
Stop immediately if the drive clicks, beeps or was dropped; if Windows shows it as RAW or uninitialised and the files matter; if it detects intermittently and is getting worse; or if you've already tried recovery software that ran for hours and found nothing. At that point the honest maths is simple: DIY attempts risk the data, and finding out properly costs nothing.
Post the drive to our lab (no cables needed, bubble wrap is fine) and within 48 hours of arrival you'll know the fault, exactly what's recoverable and one fixed price — no fix, no fee. Full details on the external hard drive recovery page, or start with the free online diagnostic.
Golden rule: if the files matter and the drive is making any noise it didn't make when new — clicking, buzzing, beeping — power it off now. Mechanical failures only get worse with power.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee — start now or call the freephone.