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The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error.

This BS showed up for my 8-year-old external USB HDD. Then I demounted it and simply hooked it up to the same computer with a different USB port (same cable), and then it works perfectly again. Makes zero sense.

And this is not the first time this kind of thing happens. I've countless times over the years, on numerous different computers, experienced how USB sockets are anything but "made the same". They seem to randomly switch between working and not working at all, or working "kinda". It's not even consistent for the same computer; at different times, one of the USB sockets might fail to even detect any device at all, and the next time, that's the one that works flawlessly.

How does that even happen on a hardware/physical/logical level? I'm genuinely baffled as to how this can be a thing.

What is it about the USB standard (or its implementation in actual hardware) that makes it so incredibly flimsy and unreliable? What could possibly explain this? It's very disturbing to me, beyond just "annoying". I was ready to throw that disk away forever, thinking it had died on me. Turns out I just had to switch to a different USB socket for the problem to go away.

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  • Could be that the physical contacts are slightly marginal in either the port or the plug of the device, with one insertion making bad connection and the next shifting slightly and making a better connection. Could be a cable failure with broken strands that make slightly better connection when warm due to heat expansion. Could be motherboard header connections shifting slightly over time due to vibration or temperature. There are lots of reasons. Dirty contacts make poor connections and drawing high power might cause weirdness. A couple of "wipes" with a good connector can "clean" them.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 9:22
  • Computers often have one or two USB 2.0 ports and one or more USB 3.0 ports. I do not know if your USB drive is compatible with USB 2.0.
    – Charles Kenyon
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 11:39

2 Answers 2

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Drives don't like intermittent connections. Sounds like time for a can of contact cleaner.
Power down first.

Any sockets that are looser-fit than expected should be avoided [or replaced].
On a desktop this would be easier - check & clean the internal connectors back to the mobo.

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  • Well, again, it seems to work perfectly other times. Just not this time, for a specific drive. And the next time, it's a different one, etc.
    – D. Pose
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 9:36
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    That's the dictionary definition of intermittent.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 10:07
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USB HDD can consume more power, than it is allowed by USB specification. In case of such event, if host is unable to provide enough power external device (USB HDD in your case) may fail to continue functioning, resulting in fatal error. Many modern hosts designed to provide more power, than specification promises, but not all. Check that your host PC can deliver more power, than USB specification promises.

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  • Did you read the question?
    – D. Pose
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 9:35
  • What exactly don't you like about my answer? I have observed similar intermittent behavior with my USB HDD and found out that is was caused by the conditions described in my answer. Some ports stop working, reconnecting or changing port helped most of the time but not always. When I connected my drive to the host capable delivering more power than specified, then it worked in 100% of cases. Also conncting USB HDD with the split USB cable, that attaches to 2 host sockets also helped, but not on all hosts.
    – dmmedia
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 9:43

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