This disk is from 2007 so warranty is no concern. Did you read that I have six identical disks (bought at the same time) ? I expect them to have the same firmware.
I realize I can spend 1000:s of dollars on a professional data recovery, but the question I am asking is what is typically the underlying problem to the behaviour I am seeing and what (if any) ways I can get this disk to register with the host computer again. Switching circuit board, rewriting firmware, etc. Normally I expect to be able to do a raw read of the disk and then use a utility to do my own data reconstruction from the binary image.
