External HDD causing BSOD

Silent Running

I was running a 500GB hard drive from a previous laptop in an adaptor in the optical drive slot of my current laptop. It has been running well for weeks, with no issues.

I attempted a restart yesterday and the laptop (win10) went to the BSOD. It would stall at the blue screen and return to it if I did a hard restart. The error indicated a ntfs.exe error. I removed the HDD from the optical bay and everything has returned to normal.

I put the removed HDD into an external enclosure and attempted to connect via USB. Back to BSOD again. I tried to connect to an old but reliable laptop and the same thing happened there.

I know that this indicates a HDD failure, but it is still running smoothly, that is, it sounds like it is spinning normally. No clicks or other strange noises. Is there anything I can do to recover the HDD? The data isn't a problem as I have it all backed up to other drives. I just would like to recover the use of the drive.

smuggler.ie

Has disk been formatted prior using on new laptop or it still contain old Windows partitions?

Boot into Windows, then connect your HDD(USB enclosure). If windows not crashing, disk is recognized and providing you not worried about data.


Run CMD(as admin), type and hit Enter after each command:
>>diskpart
>>list disk
>>select disk # (#-replace with number, ensure you select correct disk!!)
>>clean (!!This will delete everything on selected disk!!)
>>exit

>>diskmgmt.msc (this will open Disk Management utility in separate window)

Here your disk should appear as "Unallocated", you can create "New Simple volume", name it, assign letter to disk.


See if it helps

Silent Running

smuggler.ie wrote: »

Has disk been formatted prior using on new laptop or it still contain old Windows partitions?

Boot into Windows, then connect your HDD(USB enclosure). If windows not crashing, disk is recognized and providing you not worried about data.


Run CMD(as admin), type and hit Enter after each command:
>>diskpart
>>list disk
>>select disk # (#-replace with number, ensure you select correct disk!!)
>>clean (!!This will delete everything on selected disk!!)
>>exit

>>diskmgmt.msc (this will open Disk Management utility in separate window)

Here your disk should appear as "Unallocated", you can create "New Simple volume", name it, assign letter to disk.


See if it helps

The old windows partitions have been removed.

Yeah, it's crashing windows to the BSOD as soon as anything tries to connect to it.

The error is "SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED" and it's naming ntfs.sys as the failure.

smuggler.ie

Laptop make and model?

Check when updates installed and what?


See if Nvidia driver cause relevant to your case.

Johnboy1951

When the OS crashes on plugging in the drive, maybe it is time to try a different OS to see if that also would crash?
A Live CD/USB of a Linuc distro should be easy to use for this.

If it does not crash then you could probably work out what is wrong with the drive.

Is the external enclosure you used a powered one or draws power from the USB socket?
Is it possible the drive is drawing too much power?

Silent Running

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

When the OS crashes on plugging in the drive, maybe it is time to try a different OS to see if that also would crash?
A Live CD/USB of a Linuc distro should be easy to use for this.

If it does not crash then you could probably work out what is wrong with the drive.

Is the external enclosure you used a powered one or draws power from the USB socket?
Is it possible the drive is drawing too much power?

The drive is producing the same problem in 2 Win 10 laptops, one Dell and the other a recent HP. I've reverted to the older, cheaper Dell to work with this drive as I don't want to risk any corruption of my main machine: the HP.

The drive worked in the optical bay caddy for weeks and only failed when I was doing a restart. The USB enclosure has 2 USB connectors, one of which, I believe, is to provide any extra power needed.

The drive doesn't crash Linux (Mint), but when trying to do anything with the drive it gives the error "Failed to probe the device 'dev/sdc' (udisks-error-quark, 0)"

I'm not fluent in Linux, so I don't know what options I have to go further with diagnosis.

Johnboy1951

Silent Running wrote: »

The drive is producing the same problem in 2 Win 10 laptops, one Dell and the other a recent HP. I've reverted to the older, cheaper Dell to work with this drive as I don't want to risk any corruption of my main machine: the HP.

The drive worked in the optical bay caddy for weeks and only failed when I was doing a restart. The USB enclosure has 2 USB connectors, one of which, I believe, is to provide any extra power needed.

The drive doesn't crash Linux (Mint), but when trying to do anything with the drive it gives the error "Failed to probe the device 'dev/sdc' (udisks-error-quark, 0)"

I'm not fluent in Linux, so I don't know what options I have to go further with diagnosis.

That is what I was getting at ... different behaviour from a different OS.

Using Mint I would get as much info as possible about the drive .....

sudo  fdisk -l  /dev/sdc

That should show if the partition/s are still present or if the partition table has been corrupted ........ or not if the device is really inaccessible.

I would also use Gparted to get some info.

If you need to recover the drive ..... assuming it is ok ...... you can use

testdisk

to recover partition table; partitions and even files if necessary.

Of course if there is absolutely nothing on the drive you need, you can try to see if Gparted would create a new partition table and partitions on it.

Silent Running

Update: While Linux seems to "see" the drive, it can't read/write to it. Even the nuclear options don't seem possible.

At this point I'm prepared to declare the drive dead and I will grieve for a minute or two.

Thanks to all contributors, the hope was great while it lasted. I'm just glad that I'm a backer upper and all data was duplicated on other drives, although I will lose the recent revisions.

smuggler.ie

Symbolic.... at the very end of 2018 .

Johnboy1951

I would be inclined to give the drive a sharp knock before I put it to rest

If nothing else you will feel better having kicked it