Seagate Expansion Drive Appearing and then disapearing

I have a perplexing problem. I have a Seagate 2TB external drive that when I plug it into my USB3 port it appears in Explorer and sometimes I can even navigate through some of its folders. However after 2-5 minutes it just disappears and a message comes up "USB Not recognized".
When I insert it into a USB2 port I cannot see anything. Whilst it is visible I can see it in my Disk Management but as soon as it disconnects itself this disappears. I have tried to format it but it does not stay connected for long enough!
I am running Windows 10. The same problem seems to also occur on a windows 8 machine.

Is it getting it's power from a single USB port?

If so try either a Y cable to get power from two ports, or a powered hub.

Is it getting it's power from a single USB port?

If so try either a Y cable to get power from two ports, or a powered hub.

Thanks but no, it is getting its power from a separate power cable plugged into a power point.

I have a Seagate 4TB drive with similar problem, plugged into the USB3 if I run a backup too often it disconnects, when reconnecting it it doesn't appear in My Computer nor under device manager. I have to unplug the power lead & reconnect then it'll appear but often it'll say the device requires a scan for errors which it finds & fixes, trying backup again & it does the same. Plugging into a USB 2 hub (powered) works fine. A 6TB drive permanently connected to USB 3 has never had any problems.
You could try the same - unplug drive from USB & from Power then reconnect.

I have a Seagate 4TB drive with similar problem, plugged into the USB3 if I run a backup too often it disconnects, when reconnecting it it doesn't appear in My Computer nor under device manager. I have to unplug the power lead & reconnect then it'll appear but often it'll say the device requires a scan for errors which it finds & fixes, trying backup again & it does the same. Plugging into a USB 2 hub (powered) works fine. A 6TB drive permanently connected to USB 3 has never had any problems.
You could try the same - unplug drive from USB & from Power then reconnect.

Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately I have tried that and when I do unplug and re-power I can see the drive once more, but then 5 mins later it disappears again! I do not even have time to run a scan - if I do the drive will disconnect before the scan finishes. The same if I try to reformat - it fails the reformat when the drive disappears.

Have you tried running ckdsk? If you can get it to run the next time you start Windows, it'll take days though - mine did.
Try formatting via command prompt with admin

1. Go to DOS command line (click on "Start Menu", then "Run", type in "cmd" in textbox, and hit "OK")
   
   • Type in "DiskPart" in command line.
   • Type in "list disk" in command line to show all disks in this machine.
   • Use "select" to set the focus to the specified partition.
     For example "select disk 1".
   • Use "clean" command to remove GPT disk from the current in-focus disk by zeroing sectors.
   
   
   
   1. Go back to Disk Management, you can see GPT disk is "Not Initialized" now.
   2. Within Disk Management, right click on disk info, choose "Initialize Disk", You can see GPT disk is "Unallocated" now.
   3. Right click on disk info, choose "New Partition…", follow Partition Wizard and format it.