External usb HD unable to being recognized after Veracript use

[Daniele Mazzoni]

Hi all
Hi have a real big issue with my old usb Maxtor basic portable, full of precious data

After years of great experience with TRUECRYPT, today i tried to uncrypt and copy the data to another laptop with VERACRYPT, using truecrypt compatibily option.
It was mounted and it started the copy fine, but at some point the hard drive was automatically dismounted and, since then, it's not being recognized in any windows 10 laptop I have at home.
In disk management there's no trace of the drive.
I tried to use Seagate utility but neither in this case it shows up.
I thought it could be a hardware problem, but I used it flawlessy since yesterday, and it happened now with my first VERACRYPT use.
I really appreciate any advice

Thanks

[Gary Marks]

Hi Daniele,

I think your initial diagnosis of hardware failure was probably correct. I've never seen any case of corruption that prevents a drive from being detected by a computer. There is one glimmer of hope, though. There's an old trick that can bring a failed hard drive back to life for a very limited period of time. It's based on the fact that one of the enemies of silicon computer chips is heat, and chips that fail when they're hot will occasionally work again at lower temperatures. If you pop the drive into the freezer for half an hour, you might be able to copy some more files from that drive before it reaches a failing temperature. I've used this trick twice with boot drives, and I hope you succeed as well as I did. But the fact that this happened shortly after your switch to VeraCrypt sounds like sheer coincidence. The fact that you were in the middle of a long file copy operation is the reason why the drive would be running especially hot.

[Daniele Mazzoni]

Hi Gary,

Thank you for the answer
It's strange because the disk failed at the very beginning of the copy process, it was not so heated.
I'll try the freezer trick as last option cause I read it can be fatal for the disk.

Do you know if there's any kind of diagnostic tool that avoid the disk to being recognized by windows?
I mean some kind of direct access tool I can start outside windows, in DOS for example

Thank you again

[Gary Marks]

Daniele,

Perhaps the Seagate utility you already tried to use was a Windows tool, but you can find the Seagate SeaTools Bootable diagnostic tool here in the downloads section...
https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

It's curious that you've heard that the freezer trick can be fatal for a hard drive. That seems like listing the cause of death for a heart patient as "electrocution by defibrillator." Freezing isn't a technique used on a drive that's functioning fine, but for possibly resuscitating a patient that has already died. If this doesn't work out, give my best to the grieving family :)

[Daniele Mazzoni]

Haha I like the defibrillator example :)
I was referring to the moisture that can form inside the case. By the way I did it, left packed in the frezeer for a while, but nothing changed.
I used others diagnostic utilities too, like MHDD bios version and gsmartcontrol, but in every case the result is the same.... no detection at all.
Finally I thought (hopefully) it could be the mini-sata to usb card inside the case that can be broken, so i dismounted the HD (picture attached) and ordered a mini-sata to usb cable from Amazon, this is the last try.
I'm going to try the seagate tool you linked

Thanks Gary