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External hard disk failure

P

palladium

Senior member
Hi guys,

I have a friend who has an external USB HD ( Western Digital) which he bought 3.5 years ago. He came to me seeking for help when he realised he couldn't use the external HD ( explorer will just freeze when the drive is plugged in, although it does appear in My Computer. I couldn't access the properties page because..explorer was frozen). The drive appeared to be recognised properly by Windows under Device manager ( it reported 'this device is working properly'). I tried unistalling and reinstalling the drive, as well as roll back the drivers, all to no avail. At that time I had a USB stick with me, I tried it on that computer and it worked fine.

A little chat with him and I discovered that the drive failed after he failed to perform an operating system shutdown ( he turned off his PC by flicking off the switch at the wall because the computer wasn't responding). That happened about a week ago on his seven year old computer with XP installed. Three days later he got himself a new Dell XPS with Vista home premium, but the signs and symptoms were exactly the same on the new machine ( this machine was the one I tested the drive and my USB stick on).

I'm thinking of a possible hardware failure or maybe the MBR or the partition table is is corrupted but I would be grateful if anyone can help me out on the diagnosis as well as possible 'treatments'.

Thanks in advance.
 
the setup he had may have take a power spike/surge and I'd get a multimeter out and test the external drive, you may have to crakc open the case and manually connect said drive to see if it's okay.
 
Does it show up in explorer?

Im thinking that without professional services any data he has on the HD is now gone. Try reformating it, but if that doesn't work then the HD itself is shot.
 
If it's locking up the computer it's probably a broken controller. You can try removing the HD from the enclosue in case that is what is causing it...but more often than not it doesn't fix the problem. You are probably out of luck.

P.S.: A bad MBR or partition table would not freeze up the computer.
 
I had the same problem with an external Hard drive. The external drive was fine. It would work perfectly with a different PC just not the one that it froze up with.

Try the drive on another PC.
 
@BladeVenom: doesn't work on another guy's iMac either...

Right I'll tell him to format the drive. Thanks guys.

P.S.: What are the signs you'd see if the MBR/partition table is corrupted?
 
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