Either of my portable HDDs occasionally automatically reconnect immediately after I eject them, and continue to do so until the PC is powered off. Windows 11, latest version. Based on the below things I tried (as per suggestions from Google), and the fact that it first happened with one USB port and eventually started happening with another, does it seem like a port hardware malfunction? Why does it seem to be "spreading"? Advice on fixing these ports, preventing it from happening to further ports, and/or workarounds to keeping the HDD ejected despite the ports malfunctioning?

(1) Already off: "Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Change plan settings {for selected plan "High performance"} > Change advanced power settings > USB settings > USB selective suspend setting".

(2) Already off: "Device Manager > USB Root Hub (USB 3.0) / Generic USB Hub {multiple instances} > Power Management > Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".

(2a): Already off: same as 2) but for "AMD USB 3.10 eXtensible Host Controller - 1.10 (Microsoft)".

(3) Swapped cord.

(4) Tried a different portable HDD (same base product: WD 6TB My Passport, model number starting WDBR9S0060B).

(5) Restarted PC.

Looking for advice on whether this 16TB Seagate Exos X16 is recoverable or if it's simply dead.

I have a TrueNAS SCALE system with two 16TB Seagate Exos X16 drives (manufacturer recertified) in a striped pool.

Before the failure, I was changing some BIOS power settings to reduce idle power usage. While the system was powered off, I unplugged and reconnected the SATA data and power cables. I didn't drop or hit the drives, just disconnected and reconnected them. The only thing I can think of is there may have been a little flex on the SATA connector because the case is cramped.

After booting, one drive immediately started failing.

What I've tried

• Different SATA cable
• Different SATA motherboard port
• Different SATA power connector
• Tested in Windows via a USB SATA dock

The issue follows the drive regardless of how it's connected.

Symptoms

• Drive is detected with the correct model, serial number, and capacity.
• Any read attempt (fdisk, dd, etc.) immediately returns I/O errors.
• smartctl can identify the drive but cannot read SMART data (Read SMART Data failed: scsi error medium or hardware error).
• dmesg shows repeated Medium Error, UNC, and Medium format corrupted errors, including failures reading sector 0.
• Windows detects it as a 14.9TB uninitialized drive (I did not initialize it).
• SeaTools detects the drive but immediately reports "SeaTools Test Failed."

Because the pool was striped, the failed drive has made the entire pool unavailable.

My question: Does this sound like an internal drive failure, or is it plausible that simply unplugging and reconnecting the SATA cables could have caused this? I'm trying to figure out whether I got unlucky with the timing or if I may have damaged something while reconnecting the drive, squishing it or rattling the connectors. Drive is amazon refurbished, and is 6 days before warranty end funnily enough.