[Porsche-O-Phile]

I have a Seagate Backup Plus External Hard Drive that I've been using to back up my laptop and PC for about a year - it's been trouble-free until the other day when one of my cats knocked it off the desk and it fell about 3' to the floor (hardwood, no carpet so yes it was a significant jolt / impact to the unit which almost certainly killed it). Lesson learned - it (or its replacement) needs to be kept way down low and on a padded / carpeted surface.

Now when I plug it in, I can hear the drive inside spin up and get a "click... click..." and then it either powers down or beeps once. I cannot get the computer to recognize the device as being attached at all.

I'm assuming this means the drive is total junk now, or is it? I don't want to destroy a 4TB hard drive with a lot of backup data on it if there's any chance of resurrecting it, but I don't want to throw money after it or spend hours of my time on something with a low probability of success.

Anyone know anything I can or should try before I use the drive platters as target practice and go blow another $200 on a new replacement?

Seagate "warranty" is ridiculous and isn't even worth pursuing. Yes, it's warrantied but I'm sure they'll say because the drive failed due to shock it won't be covered (same thing they'd say about just about anything).

So should I be trying anything else here or just say screw it?