Jaclaz You just became my new hero. I took an USB hard drive I had here and plugged the Seagate there , plugged into my computer and presto. It just showed up like nothing ever happened to it. I am right now dumping all the contents into a second backup. Thank you very much, now, if you don't mind, would you care to explain me why or what happened to the disk? The USB case, for what I can tell, is using the same SATA connection, so shouldn't the problem, if it is related with the HD PCB be present as well? The USB driver there only converts the interface to the PC to USB, but the interface between the USB driver in the case and the HD is still the SATA. Furthermore, can I fix it and what can I do to prevent it from happening again? In any case I already retrieved 6 years worth of family pictures, so my fears of not seeing my wife for a long time are gone Thanks again for your help.