I know, it just made me so mad that I never thought of something so
*simple*. I was so locked into the tech solution that it never occurred
to me to check the cable - it was my mother's idea to check. She's now
feeling *so* smug.

Anyway, fixed the Seagate now, as well. The article I referenced gave
me the idea to run a cron job every 5 minutes to access the disc, just
to keep it going. It's a bit of a dirty hack, but it works, so I don't
care. I now have two out of three of my drives working, just the WD
Passport to go and I'll be a very happy chappy