All Questions
Tagged with external-hard-drive hard-drive
1,203
questions
84
votes
9
answers
197k
views
How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?
Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade?
To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on ...
- 999
55
votes
6
answers
397k
views
How to detect if a USB port is 3.0 or 2.0?
I have a Toshiba Canvio 3.0 external HDD. It has USB 3.0. It flashes blue if you connect it to a USB 3.0 port. If it is a 2.0 port, the light becomes white.
Yesterday, I plugged it in and the light ...
- 639
36
votes
2
answers
5k
views
Why is my USB drive showing corrupted data when plugged as an internal SATA drive?
I have a 3TB Seagate Backup Plus Desktop USB 3.0 drive, which works fine when in its enclosure, but when I get it off its enclosure and directly plug it as an internal SATA drive, it's just not ...
- 1,730
30
votes
1
answer
89k
views
Why Do Some USB Cables Have Two USB Connectors at the End?
I've recently bought an external hard drive enclosure and it had arrived with an USB cable, with one USB connector on one side and two on the other. Why do some USB cables have two connectors while ...
- 2,444
28
votes
5
answers
59k
views
Is a 7200rpm USB 3.0 drive going to have very similar performance to an internal 7200rpm drive or is it still going to be noticeably slower?
I use my old 500gb drive to store all temporary stuff (windows temp folder, adobe scratch disks etc), and anything that needs thousands of small files to avoid unnecessarily fragmenting my C drive. ...
- 1,105
25
votes
2
answers
36k
views
5400rpm HDD speeds in a USB 3.0 connectivity enclosure
I plan to replace my laptop's 5400rpm HDD with an SSD in the near future. I then want to make the old HDD an external HDD. I want to get it to work with USB 3.0.
Will I get better speeds from my ...
user494468
25
votes
2
answers
13k
views
What is the tolerable magnetic field (in Tesla) for a hard disk?
I was wondering what would be the safest magnetic field for a hard drive so that the data inside it is safe and not wiped off?
For example I have a 2.1 home theatre system and when I take my android ...
- 367
22
votes
5
answers
121k
views
Windows 10: No option to Eject External HARD DRIVE (NOT USB Stick)
When I plug in my external hard drive (again, NOT USB stick), and right click on the icon in This PC, there is no option to eject the drive.
There is a system tray option to "safely eject" it, but ...
- 376
19
votes
3
answers
58k
views
Please explain wasted space on an exFAT formatted external hard drive [duplicate]
I recently bought a 750 GB 2.5" hard drive and put it in an external enclosure. It has Advanced Format Technology (AFT), but I use Windows 7, so I assumed I would be safe.
I decided to try exFAT, ...
- 1,295
18
votes
5
answers
41k
views
Force spin-down of external hard-drive on linux (raspberry pi)
I'm currently setting up a home-server using a Raspberry Pi with an external hard-disk connected via usb.
However, my hard-drive will never spin down when being idle.
I tried already the hints ...
- 193
17
votes
4
answers
42k
views
Windows USB Tool and Unetbootin never detects external hard drive
I like to try out different Linux distro's and I don't like partitioning my main drive. I have plenty of actual hard drives that I can use for that (I like one OS per drive). Anyway, I'm trying to ...
- 548
16
votes
3
answers
4k
views
Using External Harddisk as an internal desktop SATA Harddisk
I have a 2TB Western Digital MyBook Essential External Hard-disk. I wanted to use the Hard-disk as an internal hard-drive for my PC running Linux Mint. So, I dis-assembled it, and took out the SATA ...
- 1,754
16
votes
5
answers
10k
views
How to prolong the life of an external hard drive?
In ten years, across several different machines, different companies, and different operating systems I've noticed a trend that external hard drives die long before their internal counterparts. ...
- 4,444
16
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Why does OS X insist on spinning up all external drives when loading a file from the local drive?
Why does OS X insist on spinning up all the attached external drives (firewire, usb) when loading a file from the local (internal) drive?
It's driving me insane that I have to wait for 3 attached ...
- 1,270
15
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Could a low quality SSD enclosure prevent the TRIM functionality on my SSD?
I'm about to purchase an external SSD enclosure (case) for my Samsung 860 QVO. Some case manufacturers mention "supports TRIM" in the description, some don't. Reading online, I only could ...
- 190