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External hard drive acting up

  • 09-08-2014 10:51pm
    #1
    corblimey
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,475 ✭✭✭


    One of my external backup drives has started acting up. You know that little bing drives make in Win8 when they disconnect, it was making that sound constantly, and wasn't appearing in Explorer. It's plugged into a hub, so I swapped ports and it still failed to come up. I then plugged it into the PC's front panel USB port and it came up immediately. This is not ideal, but will work for now. My fear is that being unable to power itself (?) from a USB hub is indicative of something more serious and the drive is failing?

    I ran chkdsk on it (from within IE8) and no problems were reported and Disk Manager isn't reporting any issues. Do I need a new drive? Or maybe just a new hub (there's 2 other drives and a printer plugged into the hub and they all seem to be working fine)


Comments

  • #2
    Fuzzy Clam
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,293 ✭✭✭Fuzzy Clam


    corblimey wrote: »
    One of my external backup drives has started acting up. You know that little bing drives make in Win8 when they disconnect, it was making that sound constantly, and wasn't appearing in Explorer. It's plugged into a hub, so I swapped ports and it still failed to come up. I then plugged it into the PC's front panel USB port and it came up immediately. This is not ideal, but will work for now. My fear is that being unable to power itself (?) from a USB hub is indicative of something more serious and the drive is failing?

    I ran chkdsk on it (from within IE8) and no problems were reported and Disk Manager isn't reporting any issues. Do I need a new drive? Or maybe just a new hub (there's 2 other drives and a printer plugged into the hub and they all seem to be working fine)
    if it seems ok on the front usb ports then i would suspect the hub or the cables.


  • #3
    allthedoyles
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,893 ✭✭✭allthedoyles


    Save any important stuff immediately


  • #4
    corblimey
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,475 ✭✭✭corblimey


    Fuzzy Clam wrote: »
    if it seems ok on the front usb ports then i would suspect the hub or the cables.

    It uses one of those stupid proprietary cables you often get on WD drives with the dip in the middle, so I can't just swap out new cables (and I don't think you can buy those cables separately)

    http://www.robertotoole.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Robert-OToole-WD-1TB-HDD-Cable-White-BG.jpg

    Since the other 3 things plugged into it are self-powered, it's possible the hub is no longer delivering the power needed by the drive.
    allthedoyles wrote: »
    Save any important stuff immediately

    And do what, buy a new hub, a new hard drive, run for the hills?!

    I think maybe a new hub is a cheaper first step, and see where things are. Then a new hd with its own power cable is the next step if that fails.


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