dying drive or usb enclosure?
Community Forums/General Help/dying drive or usb enclosure?
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| A few years ago or just over anyways, I got myself a 3TB USB3 Seagate external drive, it held most things as the pc I had at the time had a titchy drive, I had other externals with duplicates of files (which to be honest I really need to sort out). I recently bought a 2nd which afaik is using the same drive just in a different form factor as my boot drive on current box was getting full and needed a clear out and also it would work as the go between in sorting out the old one. It had spent all of it's life plugged in sometimes idle and normally used for mp3's that I ripped from my CD collection. 2 days ago it started dropping from the list with the usual USB remove followed by insert tones at first I thought it was the cable as it was bent up a bit near the drive side so used the new ones cable to no avail. I started copying all I could to the boot and other drive which was running out of space and afaik what I had not salvaged (though not checked 100% for data integrity) was nothing I couldn't afford to loose. Drive might be fine it might be the usb bridge but unfortunately due to Seagates methods if I plug it in as an internal (after breaking all the tabs to get it open) it says it needs formatting, so some part of the gubbins makes it an external and a reformat if I want an internal, I bought another 3tb to dump what I can in between it's falling down and not getting back up without a reboot in some cases. Do I risk formatting it and using it as a "I don't mind if I loose this" internal drive? or is it really the drive on its way and I have no pcb to test and eliminate either part. |
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| It might also be the 5V regulator in your PSU failing. Or something else with the PSU. |
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| doing drive to drive caused the new one to drop off and come back with a windows error once which worried me, but so far I managed to move from the dodgy one to C: 400gb of random gumph and it didn't drop once. USB3 front facing ports drive has been in both with 2 cables. I can run it via usb 2 if it turns out the ports are effed, but too early to tell what is what. once ive moved all I can (one folder I think is toast but that's just TGS and co-optional podcasts I downloaded from youtube so easily replaced) I will box it down till I either find a new pcb to test or say sod it and use it as an internal till it dies within a week for reals. found one folder called something unrelated to have most or all of my music folder repeated in it for some bizzare, not NTFS ghosts or owt, I must have copied it there once without noticing when juggling drives on old pc) |
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| I would try it on another machine if possible as it could be a problem with; 1) the usb port 2) the usb controller chip is on its way out, i had the same on a old gateway board 3) the enclosure is on the fritz 4) the drive is on the blink 5) something added is taking more power which is causing the other power draining device to drop. Have you added any other usb devices lately? |
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| All that happened was the addition of the 3tb drive from a fortnight ago. the original batch of drop's caused the drive to need checking but it always hangs at that point. managed to get all but 3 folders so far either directly to new new 3tb drive or to C then moved over when it was being a tart and dropping both externals, but not at the same time. got it plugged into a USB 2 port now and of the 3 folders it's only my music that is the one id like to salvage as much of as I can due to the pain in the neck re ripping all those CD's will cause, it's taking for ever for each file. Other folders are a copy of a CD rom I have in my room somewhere, so that is no worry and the aforementioned podcasts I got off YouTube. |
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| i would try it with one drive on USB and see if it works |
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