Thread: Very strange external hard drive problem! :o

Have you got another PC you can plug into?

If you get the same message, then probably the drive. If it works fine then you 'll have to trouble shoot your computer.

BTW which USB port are you plugging it into? One of the front ports? Sometimes these don't have enough power available to run a big USB drive, so try plugging it into one of the rear ports (straight into the motherboard).

What is the usage pattern of your drive? I had one fail that was constantly powered on/off rather than staying on with the computer.

Also, what format is the drive? A file system like NTFS really doesn't like being shutdown incorrectly, so what you might be experiencing is file system corruption that leads to disk corruption.

Also, if you're backing up your thesis onto a device and your experiencing these problems, I would recommend burning a copy of all of your research files to CD/DVD. You don't want this to happen a week before finishing your write up eh?

Originally Posted by Delta_Farce

<snip>

Also, if you're backing up your thesis onto a device and your experiencing these problems, I would recommend burning a copy of all of your research files to CD/DVD. You don't want this to happen a week before finishing your write up eh?

And via email attachment, and some of the online backup services like idrive or adrive, and hard copy, and thumb drive, and...



Cheers
Simon

might seem silly - but make sure your formatting it using NTFS & NOT FAT32.

Fat32 has a file limit of 2gig that it can copy & read, I got this error with a mates drive & finally I checked its formatting & found it was Fat32. There is a convert util from microsoft that can convert fat32 to NTFS - both types of file systems

I had a similar problem with an external USB/Firewire enclosure a year or two ago. It would work fine for a few weeks and then I'd receive the messages you have described. The problem ended up being related to the chipset used by the enclosure itself. It wasn't a Maxtor enclosure but they may use a similar chipset manufactured by a company called Prolific. The solution for me was to upgrade the enclosure firmware as discussed here:

External Hard Drive Problems - Storage - PC Hardware

I would have expected this problem to have been sorted out by manufacturers since then but it might be worth a look.

Ryan.

Thank you everyone for your help!

Yes spudboy I have plugged it into another pc and it still doesn’t work, and yes I am using one of the ports on the back of the computer.

Delta farce -the hard drive is always on when the computer is on, and yes it is NFTS format. I can’t remember having incorrect shutdowns lately though. And yes I have numerous backups of my work!

Thanks for the link rbjt! I’ll check it out soon!

Cheers!

Edward