Question Can a USB C to USB A dongle kill an external drive?

[Super Spartan]

I've had a 2T Samsung T5 Portable SSD for 5 year and it had worked like a charm.

I recently purchased a Dell XPS 15 laptop which only has USB Type-C ports but comes with a small Dell USB-C to Type A/HDMI Adapter so I plugged my T5 into it and used it for a while then I unplugged it using the safely remove drive icon in the taskbar.

Next day, when I plugged it in, I got a message saying that the drive has errors and needed to be repaired so I let it scan but unlike in the past where the scan would finish in a few seconds and show no errors have been found. It took forever so I just unplugged it then replugged it in and it worked fine.

The next day it did the same thing but this time after unplugging it and replugging it, it would keep showing the message that the drive needs to be repaired.

I then plugged it in to my Alienware m18 directly to a USB Type A port, the drive appears but you can't access it. I then tried to do a diskpart /clean but it would just hang forever.

The drive seems to be dead now so I ordered a Crucial X10 PRO 4TB SSD meanwhile but what do you think happened here? Can a USB dongle kill an SSD?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Probably not that way.

A bad cable could cause data corruption, but once you plugged it into the Alienware, you'd at least be able to reformat the drive.

If it shorted a certain way it could kill a device - I've had that. (Charging cable for my phone fell into some water and killed the hub it was attached to. Magic smoke and everything.) But that's instant.

This sounds like the drive just died on its own, regardless of the adapter.