I have a 2TB Seagate External GoFlex—which has a Seagate 2TB 9VT156-570 installed—that I’d like to recover the data from. It was working and I was going to make a backup. I bought a SATA docking station, and plugged in the drive, connecting it to my MacBook air.
Previously, the drive wouldn’t be recognized by my Mac because the external SATA base that the drive came with was somewhat defective. But it would mount just fine on my Windows PC. With the external SATA dock I was able to mount the drive on my Mac and check out the files. I tried copying a single small file from the Seagate, and the copy operation hung. I restarted my computer, and powered off the docking station.
After that, powering on the drive produced the repetitive beeping indicative of a spindle that is prevented from spinning (from what I researched on YouTube). I opened up the drive, expecting to have to retract the actuator arm to free the head from the spindle. The actuator arm was not fully retracted, but the head wasn’t over the platter either.
After closing the drive and connecting to power, the drive spins up and sounds normal. But, neither my Mac, Windows PC, or Linux machine detects the drive. I have verified that the SATA adapters works with other drives so I am not sure how to proceed.
As far as failures, I can only guess that either the controller board or the actuator arm motor isn’t working properly. I also can’t tell if the way in which the problem started, reading a file from a Mac is an insight or a red herring. I have Paragon NTFS and NTFS-3G installed on my Mac. I’d appreciate someone’s 2 cents.