Troubleshoot: Seagate External Hard Drive Light Blinking But Not Working!

What does it mean if my Seagate hard drive is blinking?

If the light or LED on your Seagate external hard drive is blinking, you’ll be prompted to troubleshoot. Please note that the behavior of the light or LED on your external hard drive can vary according to the drive model.

Is Seagate external hard drive not working? Please tap into the following possible reasons before fixing it.

• Damaged USB header on the motherboard
• Something wrong with the USB port
• Faulty hard drive cable
• Outdated Windows version
• Outdated disk driver
• Physical damage to the Seagate external hard drive
• External hard drive is incompatible with the current Windows operating system

How do I fix Seagate external hard drive not working?

How to fix the issue of Seagate external hard drive light blinking but not working? You can try the following fixes one by one.

Fix 1. Change USB port and restart your computer

When it comes to the easiest solution, you can connect your Seagate external hard drive to another port and restart your computer.

Because the ports that are not directly powered by the motherboard’s energy may not be able to activate the Seagate external hard drive with sufficient power.

Fix 2. Enable the USB Root Hub to make Seagate external hard drive detected

If the above method cannot work for you, there might exist detection issues. To be more specific, if the USB Root Hub is not activated by your Windows computers, the Seagate external hard drive could blink again. Please refer to the following steps to fix it.

Step 1. Connect the Seagate external hard drive to your Windows PC. Then type “Device Manager” in the search bar and open it.

Step 2. Go to the Universal Serial Bus controllers and expand it. Then right-click on your located USB Root Hub and click the “Properties” button.

Step 3. Under the Power Management tab, uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this device to power” and click “OK” to save these changes.

After rebooting your PC, you can check whether the Seagate external hard drive works properly or not.

Fix 3. Show hidden devices via Device Manager

In some cases, the Seagate external hard drive might be invisible to you. That’s why the Seagate hard drive is not showing up. Let’s perform how to show hidden devices.

Step 1. Connect your Seagate external hard drive to the computer. Then type “Device Manager” in the search bar and open it.

Step 2. Under the View tab, click the “Show hidden devices” button.

Step 3. Expand all categories and see if there is any greyed device. If it is, right-click on it and select the “Uninstall” option. Restart your computer and check whether this issue has been solved or not.

Fix 4. Update Seagate external hard drive driver via Device Manager

An outdated hard drive driver is also responsible for Seagate external hard drive light blinking but not working. This is why you need to keep your disk drivers updated.

Step 1. Connect the Seagate external hard drive to your Windows PC. Then type “Device Manager” in the search bar and open it.

Step 2. Go to Disk Drives and right-click on your Seagate external hard drive. Then click the “Update driver” button.

Step 3. Click the “Search automatically for drivers” button.

Fix 5. Delete the LowerFilters and UpperFilters values in the Registry Editor

Please pay attention that any incorrect operation with Registry Editor could lead to data loss or other serious issues. Please be careful to follow this solution.

Step 1. Press “Win + R” to run the dialog box and type “regedit” in the window.

Step 2. Go to this path:

HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class.

Step 3. Under the Class key, you’ll notice many keys below it that are long strings of characters. These GUIs (Globally Unique Identifiers) all correspond to different types of hardware in the Device Manager.

Step 4. Locate your problematic Class GUID from the list. Right-click on Upperfilters and Lowerfilters and select the “Delete” option.

Then you can restart your computer to see if this external hard drive can work properly.

Further reading: How to preform Seagate data recovery without backups?

Can you image? If you’ve suffered data loss when you’re dealing with your problematic Seagate external hard drive, what can you do to recover data from Seagate external hard drives?

Without backups, you’d better seek help from professional data recovery software like MyRecover. Let’s have a closer look at its powerful features and friendly design.

★Tips:   

Recover the deleted/lost Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, photos, videos, audio, folders, and other 200+ types of data from HDD, USB, SD cards, and other portable devices.

Judge the recovered files based on their original paths, filenames, and format.   

During Quick Scan and Deep Scan, enter filenames in the search bar to locate your desired files or wait to find all the deleted and other lost files on your computers.

Support NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, and ReFS file systems.

Download and install MyRecover on your Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, or Windows Server computers to perform Seagate data recovery!

Step 1. Connect your Seagate external hard drive to the computer, after running this tool, hover the mouse over the drive saved deleted files before, and click Scan.

Step 2. Search or wait to see all the deleted files and other missing files as you need.

Step 3. Go to the Deleted Files/Other Missing Files folder, and select the files you want. Then click “Recover x files” and save them in a new location.

In the end

Is Seagate external hard drive light blinking but not working? This post guides you to fix this issue via five fixes. If you want to perform Seagate data recovery, you can restore your desired files from disk backups or use data recovery software like MyRecover.

To prevent the second damage, it’s time for you to create regular disk backups with free backup software for Windows. Meanwhile, it also enables you to back up files, folders, partitions, or the system.