Solved External Hard drive issues.

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Timpie

PCHF Member
Aug 13, 2018
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Hi all,

For a long time i have been having issues with my external hard drive hooked up to my laptop.
I believe / think that there was always a bit of an issue. Mainly, it disconnects/reconnects, at given times.
I mainly use it for games. And sometimes when i game i see the windows load cursor ( the little blue circle) spinning around.
And not long after it works fine again. It's like a lagging interruption. Also sometimes it fails to recognize the hard drive totally.
Lately it's been doing this more and more. and i keep unplugging it. Reconnecting it to another usb port in my laptop.

And i even purchased an USB hub with external power-supply. As i also use an USB-keyboard + USB mouse on my laptop.
To deduct if it was a power problem. It's a seagate expansion 1TB drive, with USB 3.0. and my laptop also got an USB 3.0 port.

I did some other troubleshooting before i came here.

1. I went to device manager, changed policies on hard drive to best performance.
2. In device manager. I disallowed all devices in universal serial bus controllers the computer to turn off device for saving power.
3. I also performed step two in my Power options located at the battery of my laptop. It's always on charger anyway.
4. I also tried to re-install the drivers for USB controllers.

Is there anything else i could try? When i reconnect my hard drive it says it needs to repair / scan for fixing errors too.
I tried that, but it gets stuck. Whenever i run an application and some form of data retrieving is going on. The blue light of my hard drive starts blinking.
Is the external hard drive not good anymore?
 
check the SMART values for the drive and see if it shows any errors.
what is the age of it?
not that it's a good guide, but between the age and the fact it's an external drive may indicate a hard life with one too many knocks.
with the repair process also failing, that would indicate a faulty drive.
but it could as easily be the circuit board in the enclosure, the USB ports (enclosure and/or laptop) or the cable itself.

while you can still access its contents, I'd be simply getting a new external drive and copying the data.
they are as cheap as they have ever been. unless it's an easy fix (and you have tried the obvious steps) why bother with the stress.
 
The hard drive is from 2017, 27 November so roughly 3 years old.
I typed in "wmic diskdrive get status" at cmd. And it says its "Ok".
I am a bit afraid if i order a new one, i get the same complication.
Then i need to send it re-tour. I don't think it's software related.
Maybe i could try to do the repair hard drive protocol in safe mode?
Is it common that external hard drives conflict with laptops?

The same model i use is still recommended on the website i bought it.
Only for 5 euro less... so i don't know if its economical to do that.
 
have you tried plugging the external drive into another PC?
have you tried taking out the hard drive and putting it directly inside a desktop PC?

yes - definitely not a software issue.
80% it'll be the drive itself, 15% it's the enclosure itself, 5% could be just some weird shite.

do a chkdsk x: /r where x: is the external drive letter. see what that brings up.
it will take a few hours to completely scan and hopefully repair the drive.
if it fails with that, 100% faulty drive.

again - if there is anything important on that drive, I'd be getting it off ASAP.
 
Thanks Bruce, i havent thought about plugging it into another computer yet.
We only use laptops here, so i am going to plug it into another laptop tonight.
That's probably enough to determine whether its the harddrive itself or my laptop.
Running the chkdsk :G /r command. Made it stuck at stage 1: File record segment 48D09 is unreadable.
And it just goes from there being unreadable and remaining stuck at 77%.
Luckily there isnt important data on it. Mostly games. I already moved some necessary programs to my C:

I think i will also order a new external HDD, an SSD. I can see how that goes and send it retour anyway if it wont work.
I can let it know how that goes.
 
Hey,

I plugged in the faulty hard drive at another laptop.
Ran the chkdsk command. Same thing happened as on my own laptop.
I also plugged in an older drive from my old laptop. In my current laptop.
That runs fine. So i guess the problem was the external hard drive. Not my laptop itself.
So i am in the process of ordering a new external hard drive. Hopefully it will run normally.
I think we can make this topic solved now.
Thanks for the help
 
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