I have been storing photographs on a Seagate portable hard drive for a few years and hey ho it failed a few days ago and each time causes my Mac to crash and reboot itself continually until I remove the usb from the pc. My Microsoft lap top won't recognise it either, is there any way to recover the data?
If the data on the drive is valuable to you and there is no backup copy, would spending about $120 for an excellent disk utility be worth it? Several caveats though: first, depending on the damage to the drive, it’s not a 100% guarantee that it will work; second, if the drive is APFS formatted, it will not work either. HFS+ only.
DiskWarrior is probably the number 1 disk repair utility that Mac users relied on… until it fell behind and was not compatible with the newer versions of macOS. But finally, it was updated for up to macOS Ventura. I went ahead and updated to the latest version even if it still does not work with APFS, and
all my drives are APFS formatted—I want to stay up-to-date only because it had helped me recover data that I probably would have lost otherwise. I’m still hoping and waiting for the APFS-friendly update. Find it here…
DiskWarrior is a utility program designed from the ground up with a totally different approach to preventing and resolving directory damage.
www.alsoft.com
Although before you make the plunge, you may want to first try Disk Utility First Aid. And you may have to boot into Safe Mode to prevent the drive from causing the reboot. Or try launching Disk Utility or DiskWarrior, whichever route you choose, before connecting the drive.