Dead HD or dead USB enclosure?

BlueWeasel

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
15,944
475
126
I've got a USB2.0 HD enclosure I picked up on sale from CC a few months ago. It has been working great until last week and now I can no longer access the drive.

It has an older 40GB WD drive in it and it wouldn't shock me if the drive was dying. However, the drive spins up properly and I don't hear any kind of noise like clicking or slow spinup that would indicate a dying HD.

As soon as I turn the enclosure on, the new hardware icon appears near the clock so the computer recognizes the USB enclosure. Accessing the drive is extremely slow, and clicking on the drive letter in Explorer gives me a message saying "Error Accessing Drive".

The easiest thing would be to replace the HD and see if the problem persists and that's my next step.

But which device do you think is the problem -- the enclosure or the HD? I'm thinking it's the enclosure since the HD sounds OK, but then again, the computer recognizes the USB drive when it's powered on.
 

CreativeTom

Banned
May 10, 2005
1,092
0
0
Well a sure fire way to see if it's working is to hookup the drive to an internal IDE cable and see what happens. I think it seems to me though that it's your drive from what you have said, just because it spins up doesn't mean it's gonna work.
 

theMan

Diamond Member
Mar 17, 2005
4,386
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0
take the HD out of the enclosure, take an IDE HD cable, and attach it to your mobo, and drive. take a 4 pin power connector from the psu and plug it into the drive. boot up. see if it works.

bye. :)
 

MobiusPizza

Platinum Member
Apr 23, 2004
2,001
0
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basically what they have said.
Also run chkdsk on the drives.
External drives are easily ruined when unpluged without using the "safely remove the device" Windows function. The corrupted MFT may be the cause. Running chkdsk would fix it in no time.
 

CreativeTom

Banned
May 10, 2005
1,092
0
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Originally posted by: theman
take the HD out of the enclosure, take an IDE HD cable, and attach it to your mobo, and drive. take a 4 pin power connector from the psu and plug it into the drive. boot up. see if it works.

bye. :)


Hmmm....seems like I just said that....lol but I guess the extra detail you added makes it better.