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Additional external drives cause Windows to crash...

  • 19-07-2010 3:56pm
    #1
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 14,344 ✭✭✭✭


    Hey all,

    Having a bit of an issue with my hard drives and computer.

    It's got 32bit Vista Home Premium (Service Pack 2) and it's been running grand. I've had 4 external drives for a while now.

    2 x 1TB
    1 x 500GB
    1 x 80GB


    The 80GB one came with the computer and slides into the front of the computer. It runs off the computer and is easy to move about, as such, its rarely connected to the computer, and when it is, it's never in use for any longer than an hour or so. All the other drives have their own power supplies and are connected to the computer at all times.


    About two weeks ago I purchased a 1.5TB drive from Argos. Had a few issues with it where it wouldn't read the data on it or would be painfully slow, so I returned it and decided to go with 1TB instead, so see if that would make any difference.

    Anyway; the 1TB drive would freeze up when i was trying to transfer stuff to it. Transfers would keep stopping and i'd have to restart windows. After a few days, all problems disappeared, and now it's running fine. I've used about 500GB on it and it's grand.


    Last night a friend came over to the house, and I connected his 1TB drive to my PC to transfer some data back and forth, and the problems came back. Pretty much every time I'd be transferring to his external drive (again, had it's own power supply, etc.) Windows would stop responding and wouldn't restart. Kept on freezing up and I'd have to restart the whole computer in order to get things moving again.

    When I restarted it, the computer stayed at the blue screen (where it gives you the F5/F6/etc. options) for a good two or three minutes, and only contined on to actually load/start up after I disconnected his HDD from my PC.


    Sorry for the bit of a long post there, but I was wondering... Does anyone have any idea what the fcuk is going on here at all?!

    Computer runs fine when transferring between the Drives already connected to it. Has no issues when the 80GB drive is in use, and never has an issue with memory sticks, but when I attach a new 1TB drive to it, it just seems to shun the drive and not want anything got to do with it. It's a pain in the ass.


    I don't think it matters, but at the moment, connected to the PC are the three drives I mentioned above and the 1TB i got recently that I mentioned in the post (so 1x500GB and 3x1TB). However, they are connected to the PC using a USB hub, meaning that they are all practically inserted into one USB slot on the actual desktop (though the computer does have enough USB ports on it for all the drives, but two USB slots are at the front and I want to keep wires, etc. hidden at the back).



    Anyone got any idea what could be causing this problem?



    Sorry again for the long post, and cheers to anyone able to help out. Google isn't bringing me much luck.


    Cheers :)


Comments

  • #2
    CreepingDeath
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,015 ✭✭✭CreepingDeath


    If all your external drives are self powered, then that rules out the usual cause which is that the USB cable can't deliver enough power to a large external drive.

    I've had problems before with simple USB keys being on the same USB hub.
    Although I use fairly cheap & cheerful usb hubs from deal extreme.
    Is it a basic unpowered hub ?
    It's possible that more expensive usb hubs can handle multiple drives better.

    On the subject of your computer hanging on reboot until you disconnect the external drive... that I think I can help with.
    In your BIOS setting, you've probably enabled it to boot from usb devices.
    So if you just choose your DVD drive and your PC's internal hard disk, then that should avoid it hanging during boot.

    I'd try splitting as many of the drives across as many USB sockets as you can. Don't use 1 socket for 4 drives.


  • #3
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 14,344 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Cheers for the reply, CreepingDeath. Will mooch about around the computer and see what way it reacts when there's another HDD attached.


    Thanks man.


  • #4
    softdancomputer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 197 ✭✭softdancomputer


    Every time you connect an external drive, Win is reading all data from the disk; you wont feel to much freeze on a 4-8-16 GB of a thumb drive, but is a pain on 500 GB.
    The best is to keep the drives connected all the time to the computer, and if you have to transfer data, do it on a small drive.


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