Windows 10: External Hard drive off and on

The external is only 2 degrees warmer than the internal, I checked that already. I have a program for that. So, we'll hope the letter change does the trick, if not I'll be buying a new one. Yes, it has it's own ac adapter, I've tried unplugging that as well. I'm going to unplug that and shut down the computer this afternoon for a little while and see where it takes me!

 

Hope to be hearing some better news! If you do end up deciding to replace it you may want to consider simply adding a new drive on by way of a good fan cooled enclosure where the drives can be swapped out at any time rather then a drive sealed up entirely. They have good ones out there to choose from these days!

 

I'll keep that in mind

 

Tried unplugging and then assigning a new drive letter, no such luck, still doing the same thing. Guess I'll be looking for a new one after Christmas. *Sad

 

That stinks! I wouldn't toss the drive right away if you still have important files on it. The idea of running the system for a bit with the drive unplugged and then plug it back in after a few startups or restarts was to allow the fresh detection of the Mass Storage Controller item you can find in the Device Manager for the drive's controller chip.

Once the chip was detected fresh Windows would be made to reinstall the same driver fresh. With the external AccomData enclosure used here that's been a resolve for the skipping out problem you have been seeing. The first sealed drives however lacked any decent venting as well as hardly any ever seeing a fan to cool things down where drives would fail left and right until the companies smartened up a bit!

A good fan cooled enclosure especially if you have eSata ports at all allows you to put in any drive. Drive sold OEM at places like Newegg can bought much cheaper then these poor choice self contained while many have been improved over the years. The enclosures are a little tight inside with short length wiring for the usb, power, Sata connectors inside as well as many still having IDE connections as well as being able to run 2.5" as well as 3.5" drives. But they are easier to work with.

If you take your time and use some caution you should be able to remove the most likely Sata II drive from the enclosure and run that in a new one! Often the plugs and connections inside those get stuffed while the drives are still worth keeping. And when mentioning the usb cord that wouldn't what you would see outside of the casing but inside where the wires are exposed to make the connections where you could have a cold solder point.

The AccomData enclosure here is now about a full 6yrs. old and has seen a few drives put to use in it. When left on constantly however the enclosure will tend to get warm and why I went for the fan cooled one at Amazon to give that a try. If your drive is still good why pay out for a new one when a $25 separate enclosure should be able to use the current drive? Just a thought to pass along here.

 

Thanks for your ideas, unfortunately, I barely have time to breathe let alone try to do surgery on a hard drive. *Wink There's nothing important on it, just my back up and once I get a new one, a new back up will replace it. I'm calling it quits on the thing and looking for a new one after Christmas. It still works, only issue is that it sometimes disconnects in the middle of my backup so I have to try to do the back up manually a couple times to get it to work, have to time it just right between disconnects. Thanks again for your help.

 

Well if you need any help picking out a new one get back in here! *Wink I'm sure you'll be able to find a good one just the same. In the meantime you have yourself a Happy and Safe holiday season.

 

Thanks so much! You as well!!! *Smile

 

Just an update to whoever is following, I ordered a WD My Passport, it's about a quarter of the size of what I had, lol. Wish it had a longer usb cord, I assume it's because most people use it with laptops and tablets but I'm still in desktop land....but, I'll deal. My backups are working correctly again and no more external hard drive turning off and on. So, guess I'm all set! Thanks for your help!

 

You are certainly welcome! As for the external enclosure I mentioned early on in the thread I had to order a separate eSata cable rather then being stuck with another 3ft. usb cord I went with a separately ordered 6ft. eSata cable with the drive that goes in temporarily used for quick transfers when needing over the 128gb capacity of a pair of flash drives. A full system image backup for the laptop I now unfortunately need to replace took some 28hrs. over the average 34min seen with Acronis TI making one on one of the two desktops!

While the drive that was stuffed into the old enclosure is suspect to being worn and ready for tossing it only took about an hour for a previous image when the laptop was first bought by way of usb. With a desktop even with the second mini tower case a second drive was added internally recently to eliminate the need to store images on the main's extra drives there.

With that in mind one suggestion I could add here would be that you might want to consider adding in a second drive on your system there which will eliminate any future worry about usb problems. You can find some good prices on 500gb, 750gb, 1tb, or larger drives these days compared to how expensive large capacity drives were only back a good 5yrs. or so! That would have been a thought at least to pass by you before you had ordered Passport.

 

Thanks for the info, I may consider that in the future, when I can take the time to fiddle around a bit. This does the trick for now. I was surprised in the lower cost, this is a 1tb and was only 60 bucks, a few years back that would be unheard of. At this point I'm just glad that everything is being backed up correctly.

 

For sure! I had bought a WD Essentials with a 1tb Green model drive which is what goes into those! I later removed it from the original casing finding a guide for that and stuck the 3.5" internally rather then watch the drive run too warm as well as the slowed down access by way of usb back in 2009 while trying 7 out. Later the AcomData enclosure looked like a good deal at the time for better air flow when swapping that out for a pair of WD Black edition Sata 3 drives for the primary and secondary back up drives when putting the previous case together replacing the old Vista case first used for 7.

For the new enclosure with fan cooling being a large plus factor as well as the eSata I can now work with drives for other builds as well as any swapped out from the two desktops I keep going one being a build for either remote access being portable or simply testing things on. This can also be used to try drives out when in doubt if they are still good or not since I have the opitions for both usb and eSata to work with board controllers directly. For me it will be extra of course already having four HDs in the main build to start with.

 

At least you now know there are some other options available. Besides scheduled backups which tend to be partition you may at some also want to consider seeing a full system image type back up made in the event the OS or even the drive gets trashed or happens to go on you. If you should happen to run into a problem like that you would want to be better prepared and why I am adding that in here at this time.

The guide for seeing a system image created with the built in option can be looked in case you don't use any 3rd party program like Macrium Reflect, Acronis, or any other imaging wares. System Image - Create in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums[1]=Backup%20Restore

Anther tool to have onhand besides the 10 media to go live when Windows itself needs a little help in finding out why it won't start up normally and a link I keep in my sig as well is the one for seeing a Recovery Drive made up using an 8gb flash drive as a 4gb is unfortunately too small since the drive runs about 5.56gb on disk. Recovery Drive - Create in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums[1]=Backup%20Restore

These are some in the Backup/Recovery section that can actually help quite well in preventing the need to see everything started all over fresh from scratch.