SeaTools 1.4.0.4 won't detect my Seagate USB external HDD

[VirtualLarry]

Weirdness. SeaTools 1.4.0.4 for Windows, running on Win7 64-bit, on a Skylake H110 / i3-6100 rig. USB drivers from Intel ARE installed. Drive is plugged into a USB high-speed front port, and is recognized by Windows properly.

Edit: I tried "Run as Administrator" as well, and clicking "Rescan". No change.

Could it be that this drive is out of support, and Seagate removed the drive string from the recognition code? Or is this some sort of Skylake platform issue?

Edit: SeaTools for Windows 1.2.0.10 sees the drive just fine. Looks like Seagate crippled newer versions of the program, not to work with their older HDDs? Total BS...

Edit: HDD in question is a 500GB "Seagate FreeAgent" desktop external USB2.0 HDD.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Sometimes those toolkit things don't work on USB HDDs, or at least not all the features. You might need to get a specific version of the tool for USB drives. (Then again, a specific version of the tool for specific drives is also a thing.)

I know you can't easily secure erase an SSD over USB.

What are you trying to do, update firmware or something? I mean, I rarely do anything with HDDs except zero them out and format them, but the OS handles that.

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

I know you can't easily secure erase an SSD over USB.

If I remember correctly I managed to perform that on an SSD through USB using Crucial Storage Executive.
Didn't actually expect it to work but it did.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If I remember correctly I managed to perform that on an SSD through USB using Crucial Storage Executive.
Didn't actually expect it to work but it did.

Hmm... I'll keep that in mind. Does it work with non-Crucial drives?

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Hmm... I'll keep that in mind. Does it work with non-Crucial drives?

Don't know if it would work with SSDs from other manufacturers, I have only performed it on one SSD from Crucial.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sometimes those toolkit things don't work on USB HDDs

What are you trying to do, update firmware or something? I mean, I rarely do anything with HDDs except zero them out and format them, but the OS handles that.

Both versions of SeaTools for Windows explicitly support USB external drives.

I just wanted to do some SMART self-tests, surface scan, remap bad sectors.