My external drive is about to fail

68 lost souls

Hey,

My WD passport it about to fail on me. THere is about 200GB used on it. Just wondering should I just drag and drop all the items and filders from it onto another drive or is there a better way to it?

I have been using it to backup my laptop so are those backups linked to that drive or location or anything or am I ok to just move them too?

I'm pretty sure I can just go ahead but I dont want to mess up any files within them as many of them are referenced to each other on the drive (solidworks assembelies and the likes) and that is what is putting me off.

Thanks

corkcomp

68 lost souls wrote: »

Hey,

My WD passport it about to fail on me. THere is about 200GB used on it. Just wondering should I just drag and drop all the items and filders from it onto another drive or is there a better way to it?

I have been using it to backup my laptop so are those backups linked to that drive or location or anything or am I ok to just move them too?

I'm pretty sure I can just go ahead but I dont want to mess up any files within them as many of them are referenced to each other on the drive (solidworks assembelies and the likes) and that is what is putting me off.

Thanks

copy and paste the most important stuff first and then the remainder.. as a matter of interest how do you know it is about to fail?

68 lost souls

Well Im pretty sure. Probably that the connection is starting to act up as the hard drive is sometimes not found by a computer (tried a few) and sometimes when it is not found straight away I can get it to connect buy messing with the connection a bit. I checked with a different wire as well. I know it will probably be an easy fix but I just want to have everything backed up off it before I go messing with the connection.

TouchingVirus

I'm guessing it's a WD Passport 2.5" drive without an external power supply, one you just pop in the USB cable and fire away? Those drives are prone to developing faulty USB ports because there's no protection around the port - this is why wiggling it sometimes fixes the problem. You need a new 2.5" external SATA enclosure/caddy. Open the WD Passport (Google for instructions) and simply move the drive to the new enclosure.

SickBoy

TouchingVirus wrote: »

I'm guessing it's a WD Passport 2.5" drive without an external power supply, one you just pop in the USB cable and fire away? Those drives are prone to developing faulty USB ports because there's no protection around the port - this is why wiggling it sometimes fixes the problem. You need a new 2.5" external SATA enclosure/caddy. Open the WD Passport (Google for instructions) and simply move the drive to the new enclosure.

I opened a WD passport not so long ago with the intention of swapping the drive with one from a laptop. The drive was not SATA or IDE but instead direct USB to the PCB. At first I thought it was some sort of SATA - USB interface but it wasn't.
Just thought I would mention before the OP goes opening the case which can be a pain in the hole at times.

68 lost souls

Yeah its the straight to usb one. I think it might actually be still covered under warranty so I might be able to just send off and get it a new one. My girlfriend's drive did the same a few months ago and they replaced it for the new model as hers was an older version, only hers had stopped working completely.