Windows 10: Is my internal hard drive damaged?

I prefer the Portable App version, no install required.
https://portableapps.com/apps/utilit...kinfo_portable

But to run Crystal Disk Info you'd need to use a PC, and if the problem is as I suspect the power requirements it's likely to work perfectly in a PC.

 

Sound increasingly like insufficient power. Which Chromebook do you have?

 

Acer chromebook 14... 4gb ram and 32gb storage.

 

I can find no reports of the Acer Chromebook 14 having low power on its usb ports. The Acer has two usb ports, have you tried the drive in both?

 

Hi there i just tried it right now. It does work on the other usb port. I only have 2 usb ports on the chromebook. The top usb port i had plugged in the usb for the wifi mouse i use.


So what does that mean? That the other usb port is damaged? Right now i connected the usb for my wireless mouse to the usb port where it could not connect/recognize on my laptop.


I did not want to do this earlier in case it might damage the usb for my wireless mouse.

 

As I understand it, one of the usb ports on the Chromebook can be used to charge it. This may account for why one works and the other doesn't.

 

Im confused what do you mean by that.

Because that 2nd usb port has no issues with a usb stick or a 1tb external hard drive connected to it. It recognizes it with no issue. But this internal hard drive enclosure, it works on the usb port on the top. The one right under it, it does recognize it for a second and then the blue light immediately turns off and you have those error messages i posted above.

 

Some chromebooks can be charged by putting power into a usb socket. If that is the case for one of your usb ports it makes it different from the other one. The different circuitry may limit the power that can be taken out of that particular port.

As the hard drive enclosure works in one of the ports it suggests the enclosure isn't at fault. It should be safe to use it in the one port that works and on your PCs.

 

Okay that makes a bit sense.


Is there a way to find out if other ppl who have the acer 14 chromebook has the same issue? However in order to do this, they would have to plug in an internal hard drive enclosure on the 2nd usb port right? And thus very few ppl would even plug that in because either usb stick or external hard drive?


So you are telling me its possible i damaged it when i pulled it out when i didn't eject it? Or not because of this?

 

Acer forums may help answer your first question, or talk to Acer support.

The only damage you could possibly have done to the drive by unplugging it without ejecting would be file structure corruption. That's not hardware damage, only incorrect information written to the drive. It can easily corrected using chkdsk /f on a PC.

 

Hi there. Okay so that means it has to be that particular usb port then right based on all these details i have given?

Because the thing was when i first plugged it into that usb port, everything did show up and seemed to work etc.

 

I don't have a chromebook so cannot make any tests to verify how it handles usb devices. This is just guesswork based on how Windows handles them.

In Windows when you first plug in a new usb device it detects the device, loads appropriate drivers and will use those settings every time it's plugged in from now on. Sometimes an error occurs the first time, an incorrect driver is loaded and it will never work however many times you plug it in. The only way to fix this is to open Device Manager and uninstall the driver to make Windows 'forget' it has ever seen the device.

The chromebook may be remembering settings for that particular drive in that particular usb socket. It may be that removing without ejecting has caused file system corruption on the drive that makes it incompatible with the remembered settings. Any drive corruption can be repaired on a PC using chkdsk /f in a command prompt.

 

HI there. But based on what i described, that internal hard drive works fine then right even though i didn't transfer anything into it? It shows 928 of 931gb free on windows. It also recognizes it on the top usb port on the chromebook.


But i cannot do that chkdsk/f in chromebook right? I believe i did that with the internal hard drive on windows 7 desktop.

 

As I said, I don't have a chromebook for testing this. It appears yours is remembering something about that combination of drive and the lower usb port that stops it working. You could try a hardware reset.

https://support.google.com/chromeboo...-1522088882376

Correct, chkdsk is a Windows command that only works on a PC.