Windows 10: Windows 10 fried my external hard drive with a backup of my last one on it!

History lesson: Around this time last year, my hard drive Windows 7 failed. I had to use someone else's computer to buy a license for EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to recover some not all of my data. I bought a new internal hard drive for that computer.


Present day: That laptop failed the computer itself, that is; the hard drive was and still is fine. I bought a brand new computer a couple weeks ago, shipped with Windows 10 already on it. I've had it for a while now, and it seems to be working fine. However, last night I decided to try plugging on that external drive I backed up the failed hard drive a year ago. It's been sitting in its box since before my Windows 7 laptop bit the dust. It died immediately.


The way I see it, based on reports from other Windows 10 users losing HDDs, two things could have happened:


1. I tried using an old USB hub. It's USB 2.0, so maybe it didn't give the drive enough power, and corrupted the drive.


2. I restarted the computer while it was plugged in, and Windows updated itself automatically.


I have read many countless reports online from other Windows 10 users who lost hard drives, and they all mention USB hubs or Windows updates. Sinceboth of these situations apply to me, I assume I just got hit twice as hard. Interestingly, the internal drive from my old laptop was also plugged into my computer via the USB hub with an adapter and during the update, and, like I mentioned before, it's totally fine so far. Just the external drive is ruined.


This seems to be an extraordinarily widespread problem ever since Windows 10 was released that has not yet been addressed at all. Needless to say, I'm furious. I tried fixing the drive. At first, it had trouble showing up in Explorer device manager showed it. EaseUS was able to start scanning it, but the scan would hang. CHKDSK said the format was RAW. However, after plugging and unplugging many times over the course of several hours to try and stabilize the detection issues, it appears to have become totally useless. It still spins if plugged in, but that's it. It is often not detected by anything anymore, including device manager. I even tried removing the drive from its enclosure and plugging it in directly, and the only difference is the name that shows up in Device Manager if it shows up at all.


If it's really true that Windows 10 is destroying hard drives left and right, Microsoft needs to take responsibility.

:)

 

Is it possible to use windows backup utility for External Hard drive backup to External Hard drive

Hi, Ari94,

Have you tried using OneDrive for backup?

Install OneDrive on an External Drive

See the following steps:

How to take a full backup of Windows 10 on an External Drive

 

Is it possible to use windows backup utility for External Hard drive backup to External Hard drive

Hi Smittychat, thank you very much for the reply.

There is OneDrive link (Explorer) on computer but I did not use it and do not know how it work. It was there when I had purchased computer last year.

I am not trying to backup computer rather two external hard drives.

 

Free hard drive backup/restore program?

I am looking for a free (freeware) program that will back up and restore a hard drive. I'm looking to clone a few external hard drives. If the program will backup the used space instead of the whole drive this will be awesome! Thanks for any suggestions.