I have this external hard drive. Had everything backed up to this and upgraded our early '11 macbook with a new SSD & added RAM. After I got the computer up and running the wife had about 2 months worth of pictures of our newborn saved on it. We had not backed up those new pictures nor had I put back our old pictures/files onto the "new" computer.

I finally got around to adding old pics back onto the computer. I had gotten through one folder of pictures (probably around 1200-1500 in total) and it was late so I decided I would do the rest another day. Come back a few nights later and realize the pictures my wife had taken previously that had been loaded onto the computer (that were not on the external HD) were gone. It seems the pictures I transferred from the external HD back to the computer replaced the pictures that were already there. So I somehow managed to lose those pictures even though I am not sure how? Any ideas? Any way to get them back? I can't find them anywhere on the computer.

The next issue, and even bigger issue, is that the external HD is not connecting so I cannot get the rest of the pictures off of that and loaded back onto the computer. When I plug it in I hear a fast & fairly quiet beeping noise for a short while and the computer never recognizes it. Did my external HD crash/fail? Any way to extract the data off of it?

Thanks in advance for any help/feedback.

Some Seagate drives have had major problems. Western Digital is better.

3TB Seagate Hard Drives Have 43% Failure Rate

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Some Seagate drives have had major problems. Western Digital is better.

3TB Seagate Hard Drives Have 43% Failure Rate

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Yup, was just about to say the same thing. Seagate has a pretty spotty history when it comes to reliability, but have gotten significantly worse over the last few years. For HDDs (not SSDs), stick to WD and HGST (formerly Hitachi).

As for your current situation, you could always try some recovery software or actually removing the drive from the enclose and installing it directly in another computer or adapter.

Edit - reading trough your post again, I would definitely lean towards removing the actual drive from the enclosure and connecting it to another external adapter or installing it in a desktop. Maybe something like this.

Macally Ultra Slim Portable Aluminum USB 3.0 External 2.5" SATA Hard Drive/SSD Enclosure for Mac/PC (M-S250U3) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BDKUCXK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_szHlxbJCCJHMA

I just signed up for the class action on this one. 3/3 of those drives I bought have gone belly up, 2 of them were only about 4 months out of warranty.

I have learned through many failures over the years that the best way to use an external drive, regardless of manufacturer, is to only plug it in and use it when transferring files. Otherwise keep the drive unplugged and not connected to the computer when not in use.