SRS' advice about getting the data off a suspect storage device ASAP is spot on.

I have quite a few HDs of various sizes and provenances. I was going to post a HD question regarding 'shingle' technology but I'm holding off in order to do something less useful. Give advice.

I usually purchase new drives in pairs and then plug 'em in and let 'em heat up and use them for strictly temporary stuff. Once they've been in use for a couple of weeks I may load them down with stuff I care about.

In one case with some Seagate portables they worked for a few years and then they quit relatively close in time in the same way. This meant to me that the same thing went wrong inside both of them, probably component wise. I could hear the disks spin up, but the computer would not recognize them.

With me, electrical and electronic items are very 'fungible' so if you have two of the same thing, what you do to one if repeated will do the same thing to the other. In this case, both drives were the same age, used for the same thing, treated well and stored the same way.

That's where the situation has stopped. I thought of composing a nice letter to Seagate, because I'm fairly certain it's a known failure to them or somebody like them. But although they may repond out of pride it's clearly beyond warranty.

My advice is not much better: Search the internet for your specific problem with your specific HD.

Yeah, you read this far for not much. More later!