Have a Seagate barracuda 3TB external that's been a valuable companion. I usually back it up, but not often enough. This morning I started up my computer and the drive wasn't visible. Unplugged it and plugged it back in, and after about 3 second of spinning up, you hear a 'chunka-chunk, chunka-chunk, chunka-chunk', after which it seems to give up and quiets down. Tried removing from enclosure and connecting direct through SATA, but same noises and still not visible in disk utility (I'm on a Mac btw).
Any thoughts? Tried some disk recovery tools, but they can't seem to do anything if the drive isn't recognized. If there was no spinup or power I'd know I need to send it away for recovery, but is there anything else I can try I'm not thinking of?