Other External products

[Daryl Allwood]

Hi,

Basically I have encountered a problem with my Seagate Expansion USB 3.0 + 2.0 external hard drive.

Problems:

• unable to access it at all
• Doesn't appear in Disk Management
• Computer performance drops when the external hard drive

On top of this I get the message "you need to format the drive before use" , I hope that there is some way of accessing the files so I do not lose the data, but at the moment it seems the only way I will ever be able to use this drive again would be to format it.

[AskTheLeaf]

Does the drive appear in Device Manager?

It sounds as though your data became corrupted. Have you tried attaching another cable to the drive as well as moving it to a different computer?

If you still can't access your data but need it back, try data recovery software. There are several free versions available online, or you can use our data recovery software, which is avaiable here:

http://www.seagate.com/services-software/data-recovery-services/consumers/file-recovery-software/

It'd also be good to test the drive using our SeaTools for Windows utility:

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

[Daryl Allwood]

Hello thank you for replying,

The device driver does still appear in the Device manager section. Unfortunately I do not see the device listed at all in the usual section in My Computer. Also I am unable to load SeaTools with the device plugged in, it just becomes frozen really on "detecting usb" and once the device is removed the program successfully loads. As of yet I have not tested the device on another computer.

[AskTheLeaf]

Thank you for the information.

I would definitely try another cable and another computer, then see how the drive behaves. If you don't need your data, format it and see if things improve at that point.

Should you need the data, use the data recovery link I previously posted here.