External Hdd Suddenly Not Recognized In Windows (10) Explorer. Now What?

I am running an older all-in-1 pc with Windows 10. I have several external HDDs (Element or Passport) attached at any one time. About a year ago, I selected one of the drives in explorer and got an error that the drive was removed or unreadable (I don't recall the exact message - but I cannot access or even find that drive). I unplugged it and figured that data was just gone.

Happened again to another drive. These things are, like, 3 to 5 TB of data so they aren't just nothing. After this last one I looked into what I could do. I'm certainly not spending north of $500 to recover data. I tried Disk Drill which cannot find either drive. I tried Victoria537 which also cannot find either drive. I could buy a drive enclosure like they show in YouTube videos but whom am I kidding?

What should I do? Buy me an enclosure drive and kid myself? I mean, if I break it even further the thing is useless now anyway.

Thanks for whatever you can suggest to a functional idiot.

 

Tried them on another PC? Do they seem to power up? If you don't have any lights or indicators, hold the drive, you should feel it wobble as the drive is spinning.
Then try "shucking" removing the drive from the case and get another adapter to test them.

 

Was it the same USB port that the "lost" drives were attached to when they disappeared?
It is worth trying a different USB cable too.