Is my external HD dead?

Another day, another dead hard drive - maybe.

Anyways, it's a 3 year old external HD, been good to me as a storage and backup database. Anyways, recently, it doesn't work often, I hear it on and spinning, and Windows recognizes a USB device hardware, but I don't see the drive in My Computer, nor when I go to Disk Management. Now it doesn't see it at all. Windows recognizes a hardware device, but that's all.

It does not make large clicking sound, so I don't think it broke.

I would pack it in the freezer, but that's my last ditch effort, hoping to find other ways.

Thanks.

 

I don't think it's dead. If it spins up and windows recognizes it as something (even tho that something is not a working drive) then it's not dead. I also have an old drive that I use externally, and it doesn't always get recognized by my computer.

 

Yea, it's really iffy, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Rebooting sometimes helps, but constantly rebooting isn't a good thing

 

Unless you are already using one of those USB cables with a second plug to your computer, this is most likely due to the hard drive not receiving enough power all the time. It will spin up, but you won't see it in Windows.

 

Something I also failed to mention is that, alot of the files are .zip or .rar files, and are compressed .png files(images). Pretty much 80% of them are corrupted(they make ZipGenius popup an 'Invalid' warning. When they are compressed at force though, they create a folder with 14 images of a certain vehicle. If I compressed them all at force, of those 80% that say 'Invalid', are those 14 images. Everything else is what they are supposed to be.

That's if it works, it just worked again, but for how long, and when will it stop? =(

 

Not sure what is going on, but I would back up any good data you have left on that drive. Best of luck to you!

 

this could possibly be it. but in my experience all my drives stutter or make beeping noises as it spins on and off when there's not enough power.

i had something like this once. it turned out that i didn't force in the usb cable into the external enough.

in my experience dead hard drives don't spin at all.

have you tried using it on different computers?

 

Yeah i had a similar problem and it was due to not enough power. The disk would spin up and sometimes if i was lucky it would show up in windows. When copying files often got errors on big files because the drive would turn off after 10 minutes of copying. I bought a new external case and it fixed the problem. The disk was fine. You can try connecting the disk to a desktop if you have one. If the disk works there then its fine. Also run chdsk /f /r on the disk. Fixed most of my problems with broken files and invalid zips/rars.

 

Oops, I failed to mention its a powered 3.5" HD enclosure set. I have it directly set up to the notebook through USB, and it detects something but does not see nor recognize it as a storage disk, or a disk at all.

 

Yeah it was the same for mine. It was a 3.5" HD with external power. Still didnt work right after a while. When I opened the case i saw that one of the power cabels wasnt soldered on a 100%.

 

Perhaps, I'll check out another enclosure when I get the time. Thanks for the help.