This HD (2TB drive)is used exclusively for backups and is only attached when doing backups. There is no OS on the external drive. I have an internal SSD and when my external Seagate was attached, it showed as sda. There is no OS installed on the Seagate, only partitions for backups.

Several days ago, I was going to do a backup on Ubuntu and when I plugged in the external drive to a USB port, the standard icons which show in the left panel of the Ubuntu Desktop did not appear as they usually do so I was unable to access the drive to do my backup.

I have done the following to try to detect the problem, the external would be sda.

sudo badblocks -v /dev/sda
badblocks: No such file or directory while trying to determine device size

sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.11.0-40-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Smartctl open device: /dev/sda failed: No such device

sudo blkid (shows NO partitions for sda)
sudo parted -l, sudo fdisk -l AND sudo lsblk SHOW NO PARTITIONS FOR SDA
Using Disks in Ubuntu, only the SSD drive shows, not sda (the external drive)

With the computer powered off, I attach the external drive and power on the computer to try to boot and I hear a constant beep from the external drive. (From what I have read, this generally means on a Seagate that the drive is not getting enough power.) After about 2 minutes, I see a NON-blinking cursor in the upper left of the screen. After another minute, I see the BIOS firmware options (Boot Options, BIOS firmware options, etc.) If I select a boot option from the UEFI menu, it appears to start booting but never does.

If I shut down the computer and disconnect the external drive, my Linux system boots without problem.

I have a second laptop which shows the same results when the external attached except that the lsblk command shows "sdb" but no partitions. This laptop has a SATA drive so the internal would be sda.

I've tried using diifferent USB ports with the same negative results.

Since I also have windows 10 installed, I did an online search for Seagate Repair Tools for Windows and got to the Seagate site which suggested trying a different port or cable particularly if there is a constant beep which I did. The Seagate site suggested that in windows I go to Device Manager, then the View tab and the Show Hidden Devices, then expand Disk Drives which did show the Seagate drive, The suggestion was to right click Seagate Drive and select uninstall then unplug and plug in again which I did with no positive results.

Generally, when I do a backup, I have the computer powered off, plug in the USB drive, boot the OS and proceed to do the backup. I'm not sure if the drive is dead, if it needs more power as suggested by Seagate due to the beeping or if I accidentally unplugged the drive without first ejecting or unmounting it or if there is some other possibility. The 2TB size is far more than I need as I rarely have more than 30GB of data on it.

Suggestions welcome and thanks for any help.

Since it seems to exhibit dead drive symptoms it is most likely dead. As it shows no partitions or anything on the drive a re-partition is in order to see if it can be brought back to life for however long it will last. But realistically the time has come for new drive for your backups unfortunately.

No surprise really, it's a bit of a waste anyway as what I back up rarely amounts to 30GB so I'll probably just keep a few small flash drives and double/triple up. I got this Seagate because I previously had one which lasted me 8+ years and when it finally crashed, I managed to save almost all the data. I don't have much data to save so flash drives should work for me.Thanks.

A single backup is as exposed to failure as the drive you are trying to protect - I use 3 of everything.
If you're not prepared to do that, use a cloud service and let someone else worry about it.

I use three for my data too, for my computers I use two. I will build new machine if it works well then another gets built so I have backup. I will always build at least a generation behind the new shinny hey I am moron and will gladly be ripped off by the suppliers, I need it so bad. I learned that lesson long time ago and stepped off the upgrade churn for their outrageous profit. It has worked well and saved me thousands upon thousands over the years. I need to see at least a double in performance to think it is time to do it. Currently on the 9th gen intel I think it is and was looking at the new benchmarks of the whatever it is the current gen new shinny, my processor beats them in single core and is only 30% behind in the multicore. Intel has hit another one out of the park with their junk tiny little improvements they do.

Agreed. As a hobbyist, I have personal data (Pictures, Music, data files important to me) which rarely change. I used the 2TB drive for system backups and other (flash) drives for my more personal data described above. I didn't really lose anything as I had other backups but I would certainly agree that in a professional/business situation 2 backups would be a bare minimum.

I have a home 'server', all other machines access it for data. That being said, I guess I have at least three backups for the server. One is on an extra hdd drive in the server itself. One is external large drive for quarterly backups, and last one is a yearly backup that is stored off-site -- just for peace of mind. External HDDs are relatively 'cheap' anymore. So have several yearly backups off-site going back a few years. Not a big financial burden. In your case I'd suggest buying another external drive. Much faster than those thumb flash drives and more reliable. I prefer, anymore, external drives that supply their own power (unless SSDs which sip power in comparison to HDDs). A bit bulkier, but no issues with USB power (ran into that issue with Raspberry PI 4s).

Do not know why anybody would bother with the thumb drives anyways, the price of a 120gb SSD and an external dongle to connect to the machine is not much more than that size of thumb drive maybe even less depending on deals to be had. The only thing I use a thumb drive for now is bootable installers, everything else goes onto the SSDs I have for that purpose. The Pi4 has junk for usb if I connect up my keyboard before boot it will not do it. Good enough for low power low speed operations but the USB3 is severely limited I am lucky to get 35-40MB/s transfer rate from any drive connected to it over the network or locally, between other machines I can get the full 100+ my network will do. For that matter the same 100+ from my desktop machine to my USB3 hard drive dock to spinning rust drive, I just turned it on to check the speed.

I agree entirely with the last two posts. I have 2 Linux systems installed and the personal data I want is on both systems. I don't make many changes or additions to the directories/files and much of what I have is not really that importat to me but if it was, I would get another external or other drive. I don't (as a hobbyist) who doesn't make many changes, have a whole lot of new data to backup but I might still take your advice. THanks.

A bit off topic, but...

I've had no problem with my Pi-4s in that regard concerning keyboards (and mice). The times I had a keyboard and mouse (USB2.0 ports), and monitor attached plus external SSD. I could boot just fine. That said, most times I run 'headless' and get in with SSH. Four of the PI4s I have handy, they boot off an external USB 3.0 SSD drive attached which works 'really really' well. One is a Samsung T5, next a T7, and the last two use USB3.0 to SATA cabled SSDs (found a use for those lower capacity SATA SSDs that I'd pulled from desktops!). I have not run into any problems with these setups. However, when I connected a 'second' drive is where I ran into power problems. Now, if that second HDD drive was self powered, it ran great with the PI4. This was my attempt to use a RPI4 as a mini data server for around 2TB of data. But, ran into a problem that I wasn't able to resolve. When I rsync'd data over the network to the RPI4 server it would work great for a while, but then slow to a 'crawl' even for little files being transferred and never recover. Instead of minutes, it would have taken hours to complete. So backed out of that experiment for now. Reading speed was more than acceptable. Just writing lots of files it would bog down. CPU usage was low, and plenty of memory available... So not sure what the problem was/is. Anyway, thought I'd relate my experience!

Every time it is connected it fails to boot, strange as hell. Luckily I had it setup for ssh access from the start so could use it headless over that. Yeah and the power limitations on the USB ports now I read about your problems with it. I read about those on the Pi forum with them ignorant aholes there, what a toxic place that is drive bys on posts everywhere by the employees of the Pi foundation, the programmers, the people involved never seen anything like it. All ignorance all the time. Hmm I use rsync to backup my Pi over the network but now I think about it it is always a full computer with actual power, fully working ports that does the rsync to get the files from the Pi. I use it to clone the SSD connected to the Pi to a spare I use and to backup my rtorrent install to its backup machine. Those copy thousands and thousands of files at a time.

In my case it was backing up 'to' the RPI's data USB 3.0 HDD (brand new 4TB drive formatted ext4). Not sure if nfs problem, or rpi4 USB 3.0 problem, or... Might have to try again at some point for 'fun'. I have a mid-size tower box that is my headless home server (works very well), but was wondering if the RPI4 could be used, so that I could have a small 'desktop' file server versus the bigger tower box which has mostly empty space in it.

I would blame the nfs in that idea I have 6TB connected to the USB3 ext4 in powered dock, it works very well. Aside from the poor transfer rate well if you consider less than half what a fully implemented solution does poor. But slowing to a crawl with a rsync have not seen that.

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One thing that everyone needs to be aware of when using the inexpensive home HDDs.

Almost all the manufacturers use SMR (shingled magnetic recording) technology on the drives designed for workstations (home and office). They use CMR (cylindrical magnetic recording) technology on the drives for NAS and enterprise use (and those cost more).

The issue with SMR drives is that after they get ~30% filled the write speed slows drastically because it has to move data that is 'shingled' over the space where new data is being written. The more data on the drive the slower the write speeds as a result of needing to move more layers of 'shingles' for each write. Drives using the CMR technology do not suffer this slowdown.

This happens regardless of the app being used to write the data. Rsync is one app where it quickly becomes apparent since the user is often writing a significant amount at a single session.

My advice (and personal practice): Spend the extra and get the NAS or Enterprise drives when a new one is needed.