Questions tagged [external-hard-drive]
A hard drive designed to be connected to a computer via an external interface such as USB, eSATA, Thunderbolt, or IEEE 1394.
3,424
questions
0
votes
2
answers
214
views
WD 14TB EasyStore doesn't spin up both inside the enclosure and outside of enclosure
I have a WD 14TB Easystore which stopped spinning up in it's enclosure for no apparent reason. Disk Management would show it but give "fatal error" when trying to assign a letter.
I removed ...
0
votes
1
answer
2k
views
What cable I need for a Western Digital hard drive?
I broke one of my cables from the Hard Drive, but I don’t know what type of cable to buy. The broken cable on one side has the initials “ATA” and the other end is ICT, and I don’t know where to buy it ...
- 1
1
vote
2
answers
123
views
External 2TB SATA USB HDD w only 194 GB free of 1.81 TB with only 217 bytes in root drive?
Toshiba External 2 TB, exFAT formatted, USB 3.0 interface connected to a Windows 7 computer. The external drive has been stored on a shelf for almost 2 years.
When I reconnected it showed 168 GB free ...
- 11
1
vote
2
answers
4k
views
How to get new hard drives into a QNAP NAS and transfer the old data from static volume
I want to make sure this plan works.
Existing setup: 2-bay QNAS NAS drive containing two 1TB drives. No RAID. One drive is a "Static Volume" and one is a "Legacy Volume" (from an ...
- 153
1
vote
1
answer
526
views
Can I abort command chkdsk /f/r/x running on 1 TB external hard drive and is stuck on stage 2 from past 12 days?
I have an external hard drive of 1 TB by WD with data worth of 480 GB. It was responding too slow during data retrieval. Went to couple of forums to find the solution and one suggested to run chkdsk ...
- 11
0
votes
1
answer
1k
views
SSD failed after format. no longer can be initialized
I have Windows 11 Home on a HP Laptop with an internal 500GB SSD. I added an external 1TB SSD with a USB cable (inside a ugreen case) which was in use and working well. Later I decided to format the ...
- 1
5
votes
1
answer
911
views
How to write windows installation iso to usb hard drive
There seem to be many tools to write an ISO to a USB stick, but I am trying to write a windows installation ISO to an external hard drive, many tools don't even list it as an option to write to, what ...
- 2,234
0
votes
1
answer
52
views
CCC from one disk to external disk, then CCC back on Mac
Last year I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a clone of my 2012 21.5 inch Mac running Mojave to an external drive. Sadly, it was NOT an SSD type drive. I upgraded the OS to Catalina on the new external ...
- 13
4
votes
3
answers
409
views
A single HDD stops working in USB 2 enclosure
I have a WD hard drive that simply refuses to be read when put in a WD enclosure for SATA to USB 2. The drive shows up in macOS, Ubuntu and Windows, but appears uninitialized/unpartitioned.
Here are ...
- 670
1
vote
1
answer
158
views
How do you wait for a drive to load before running a startup script on Windows 10?
I have a program in an external drive, and I want to run it at startup, but putting it in the startup folder causes a file not found issue, because the drive had yet to be online. Is there a way to ...
- 129
-1
votes
1
answer
63
views
Computer hardware
I have question related SSD. My laptop is HDD, Window 10 . I need to download a IDE which is not working in my laptop and it is continually hanging, when I asked my teacher he said this IDE will work ...
1
vote
1
answer
1k
views
Does a PCIe SSD need a different driver if it is moved from an internal slot to an external enclosure and connected via usb?
Does a PCIe SSD in an internal M.2 slot need a different driver from a drive of the same type sitting in an external USB enclosure?
The enclosure uses a Realtek RTL9210 USB to PCIe / SATA bridge, if ...
- 35
0
votes
1
answer
132
views
Make an external hard drive unbootable and recover old data
I stored important data such as pictures, software, and backup of my websites in an external hard drive (2TB). When downloading and running Windows 11 setup I mistakenly made this drive bootable.
Is ...
- 11
0
votes
0
answers
345
views
Why will Windows boot from one external drive but not another?
I have read in the past that Windows won't boot from an external drive.
Recently I changed laptops and I now have the old hard drive (V-NAND SATA) in a usb enclosure. It turns out that the new laptop ...
- 35
2
votes
1
answer
2k
views
System keeps writing in \$LogFile and \$Mft on external drives, causing them to spin up constantly (Windows 10)
My external drives kept randomly spinning up for no reason. I disabled indexing and optimizing on them and did all other commonly recommended things, but it kept happening.
Then I installed Process ...
- 81
0
votes
1
answer
3k
views
USB 3 to SATA adapter: ASM1153 vs ASM225 performance?
So I just got two 16TB Seagate Exos drives that I need to attach to my computer via USB. I have a couple of old Seagate Expansion enclosures from shucked 6TB drives - I tried them and they worked fine....
- 81
6
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Limitation of speed of data transfer between two external HDs on the same USB port
I have the following itens:
MacBook Air M1 (with 2 USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s))
2 identical external hard drivers with 2TB and USB-A 3.0
USB adapter/dongle USB-A 3.0 to USB-C 3.0
My questions are:...
- 73
5
votes
1
answer
446
views
USB extension cable drops external USB disk speed
I have a (new) Seagate USB 3.0 4 TB disk here. Without extension cable I have about 100 MB/s read speed. But when I use a (quite new) Amazon Basics 2m USB extension cable it drops to 40 MB/s.
As far ...
- 1,250
0
votes
1
answer
204
views
Hard drive not spinning properly in external USB case
I have two disks that I'd like to use inside a cheap USB 2.0 case. I can use the first one just fine, when I plug it the hard start spinning nicely and the disk eventually shows up on my computer. ...
- 1,309
0
votes
0
answers
398
views
WD Unlocker doesn't appear
I have a problem with the pop-up box wd unlocker. I had to remove my extern hard drive WD MY Book from the shell and connect it with cables adaptor to my laptop. But know my drive is recognize just as ...
- 1
-1
votes
2
answers
305
views
USB External Hard Drive with Windows 7 crashes
I have a USB external hard drive with Windows 7, but, when I get to the OS itself, the computer crashes with code stop code 0x0000007B. Is there a way to fix it? I have tried doing stuff like ...
- 11
0
votes
1
answer
191
views
The USB port only recognizes a WD Elements hard drive
On my laptop I have a USB port that only works with a WD hard drive, I tried to connect another device such as a mouse, keyboard, USB memory and nothing, the strange thing is that in the device ...
9
votes
4
answers
13k
views
Eject/dismount a drive using PowerShell
I would like to eject/dismount an external USB drive via PowerShell.
Meaning, I want to replicate exactly the behaviour of these UI actions (Ejecting drive via Windows UI):
Currently I am using this ...
- 91
0
votes
0
answers
180
views
How to restore the exFAT structure on my hard disk?
So I have a hard disk that contains a backup of some of my files (it has 2 partitions, a GUID partition map with one Time Machine “backup”, which is a clone of my Mac in APFS format, and other is a ...
1
vote
1
answer
4k
views
Very slow extraction of a tar file on an external drive
I am trying to unzip a tar file on an external hard drive which is taking way to long.
The file is 100GB compressed and will be 500GB uncompressed.
I am using the following commands on windows command ...
- 113
0
votes
2
answers
244
views
How to make best use of only good sectors/partitions on a semi-faulty HDD?
Some time ago, I've been given a Toshiba 1TB external USB drive for free.
The reason for this giveaway was that the drive allegedly stops copying/reading at random and is therefore too faulty to use. ...
- 43
0
votes
1
answer
215
views
Setting up External Storage for Micro Server
Need advice on a relatively cheap and stable way to set up external drives with an Optiplex micro. I upgraded my old homelab server (i5 with ZFS RAID 1 over SATA) to an Optiplex 5060 micro. Optiplex ...
0
votes
1
answer
235
views
How fragile are powered-off mechanical USB 2.5" hard disks really while transported?
I'm going to be forced to move from here sooner or later, likely sooner.
All my pathetic life's digital data is on a bunch of (redundant in 6+ copies now) 2.5" (and one 3.5", the oldest) ...
- 3
1
vote
1
answer
70
views
Adding custom text after portable USB drive letter
Kinda fancy question, but how can I add custom text after portable drive letter name?
My DVD has the following name pattern:
Label (DriveLetter:) CustomText
But my other USB portable drive has:
...
- 19
0
votes
1
answer
3k
views
How should I interpret this "Bad disk" report by CrystalDiskInfo?
Today, I have gone through the process of individually plugging in all my ten current backup disks and checked them with CrystalDiskInfo 8.17.8 x64 in order to determine whether I dare to keep using ...
- 1