What's wrong with my external HDD?

MarcLister

MarcLister

MarcLister

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I have a 1TB Samsung HDD in an Icybox external enclosure. Every so often the drive just vanishes from Windows Explorer when its switched on. Turning the HDD off and back on makes it come back to Windows Explorer. I'm concerned about why this is happening and if its fixable or not.

I've run a basic chkdsk scan and no problems were found. I then ran chkdsk e: /r /v and it was OK until it started stage 4. Stage 4 is verifying file data and its 10% complete so far. Its been on 176 of 21648 files for quite a while now and to make matters seem worse the chkdsk.exe process is taking exactly 5,868,023K of RAM according to Task Manager. It seems to have frozen/got itself stuck.

Is this indicative of a problem with my HDD or is it just checking a massive file hence the slowdown/stop?

Considering chkdsk hasn't found any problems yet is there any other software I can use to check if there's anything wrong with this HDD?
 
It's not a dodgy usb cable is it?

Scan the disk with the seagate tools and with the checker that is a part of 'hdtune', just download the latest version, 15 or 30 day trial

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html


Could be a duff enclosure also, I've seen an akasa enclosure that had a faulty molex connector (would turn the drive off if you fiddled with it when it was on)
 
Like your thinking bledd. I should have a spare USB cable I can try out after I've done the tests.

I've had this Icybox enclosure for a few years now. You recommended it, remember? :p
 
OK the Seagate tools didn't show any errors. HD Tune however is. On the Health tab there's a yellow highlight over the Ultra DMA CRC Error count with a warning label in the status field.

When I click on the line for that error it says there were communication errors that may have been caused by a faulty cable.

I think bledd wins this round. :)
 
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