Windows 10: External Hard Drive Crashes Windows Explorer and Computer

Hello,I’m currently experiencing a problem with my external hard drive, WD My Passport Ultra.When I was transferring a file to the WD drive the wire got disconnected and now the drive does not work.When I connect my drive to the computer, the green bar showing the drive loading in Windows Explorer moves very slowly and it gets stuck when it’s close to the end. During this time I cannot access any of the drives including my C drive, the WD external drive or my other internal drive. The green bar never finishes therefore I’m left without the ability to access any of my drives.I cannot even disco

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Windows Explorer crashes whenever I open my external HDD or thumb drive in explorer..

Windows Explorer crashes whenever I open my external HDD or thumb drive in explorer..

So, I open up My Computer, open my F Drive and boom: "Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and must close". It is really annoying! I am fine everywhere else in explorer, but something just screws up when I try the external HDD (USB) or my thumb drive.

Can anyone help?

 

External Hard Drive Crashes Window Explorer

Hi,

A hard drive may crash due to a faulty sector or at times it could also be an issue that is something related to the hardware. That being said, we would need the answers to the following questions for us to identify what troubleshooting steps to apply:

• Aside from performing a test if the external drives are working on other computers, what are the other troubleshooting steps you've performed?
• Is the issue happening on a different user profile?
• Have you tried checking if a USB storage device with small memory capacity has the same issue?

In the meantime, you can perform these steps for initial troubleshooting:

Method 1: Running the Hardware troubleshooter

You can run the hardware troubleshooter by clicking on this
link. For future reference, you can keep this
article as this also include a list of troubleshooters that you can use.

Method 2: Performing Clean Boot

Perform a clean boot on your computer to ensure that there are no possible conflicting
programs that may run in the background that could cause the halt when using your external drive.

After performing clean boot, we advise that you enable each services after each restart on your computer while your external drive is connected. This is for us to see if what program might be running on the background
that may trigger the crash specially when accessing your external drive. If all services are already enabled and still the issue persists, best to perform the next methods.

Method 3: Running the Disk Defrag

You can also do a Disk Defragmentation on your Windows to ensure
that sectors (Memory on your drive) are organized and would be easy for the system to be read. Doing this won't be affecting your files though it is still a best practice to have all your
personal files backed up.

Method 4: Updating your USB Drivers

There is still a possibility why your computer crashes when accessing your external drive as the USB drivers might be having a hard time reading your external drive due to possible outdated drivers. We suggest ensuring that all your
USB drivers are up-to-date by manually downloading the drivers from your computer's manufacturer before uninstalling and reinstalling your drivers and firmware. You can also do these steps to update your
USB Universal Bus Drivers:

• On your keyboard, press Windows + X and click on Device Manager.
• Search and expand Universal Serial Bus (USB) host controller.
• Next, right click on All the drivers and click Update.

Please don't hesitate to get back to us with an update.

 

External Hard Drive

Hi John,

We suggest that you try the troubleshooting steps below:

• Open your External Hard Drive file in File Explorer.
• Type the name of the file you want to search on the search box and click Enter.

The file will show up in Search Results and you will be able to move it to the correct folder.

Let us know if you need further help.