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My WD External Hard drive started messing up yesterday when it would lag my PC and then altogether just freeze my PC. Every time it's connected, it freezes. And then when I unplug, the PC starts working again. I have so much important files on there. I have tried everything that I've seen on the Internet, but nothing would help.

Can anyone please help me?

Additional information:

I have had it for about 3 years.

It's a WD 1TB My Book 1140.

I am on Windows XP

There's a blinking white light that never stops blinking

I have it running constantly.

Up until recently, I had NO problems with it. When the power would go out, it would still work fine, and the power hasn't gone out in like a month. HELP PLEASE!

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  • have you tried it on another computer? Jul 7, 2015 at 19:18
  • Yes, I tried it on a friends computer that had Windows 7, it WOULD show up on Device Manager, but could not see the drive on My Computer. It would also slow his PC down but it would NOT freeze like on my PC.
    – Rivera3326
    Jul 7, 2015 at 19:20
  • It is possible that you are experiencing a drive-letter conflict. If you have any USB storage devices which you had connected just before this started happening, and they had the same drive letter as your removable drive, you might try connecting them and manually setting their drive letter assignments somewhere down the alphabet. (the registry settings appear to live in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices; perhaps do some google searching)
    – Yorik
    Jul 7, 2015 at 19:40
  • External rotating disks are the one of the least reliable storage methods that there are. Keeping files you care about only on one external rotating disk is a recipe for disaster. Jul 7, 2015 at 20:11

3 Answers 3

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It seems that you're not the first one to experience issues with XP and WD hard drives:

http://ccm.net/forum/affich-53951-wdelements-1tb-external-drive-issues

Try disabling legacy USB support in your BIOS.

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  • Ok I looked at the link and cant figure out how to disable legacy USB support. Can you step by step tell me how?
    – Rivera3326
    Jul 7, 2015 at 19:44
  • Do you have this option in your BIOS? I don't know what your BIOS looks like. Jul 7, 2015 at 19:45
  • Well I found something called USB Operation Mode and another mode to disable USB Controller.
    – Rivera3326
    Jul 7, 2015 at 20:00
  • @Rivera3326 what options did each of them have, if any? Jul 7, 2015 at 20:06
  • There is no Legacy USB Support in my BIOS. Just USB Operation Mode and USB Controller. I disabled USB Controller, but then I couldnt use Mouse and Keyboard.
    – Rivera3326
    Jul 7, 2015 at 22:37
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You will have to troubleshoot the problem: The first step would be to try a different USB cable, to rule out the possibility of a bad cable. The next step would be removing the disk from the external enclosure and hooking it up directly into a PC and running a chkdsk /r on it (which sounds simpler than it might actually be).

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  • +1 for checking the USB cable, assuming the external drive has one that is detachable (as the WD My Books do). Jul 7, 2015 at 19:34
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    – DavidPostill
    Jul 7, 2015 at 20:35
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If the drive is only 3 years old, there is likely a 50/50 chance it could be the hard drive itself OR the SATA controller. 3-5 years is not an unreasonable range for failure, but 3 years is still on the low-end in most cases (even running an external HD constantly).

If you are certain that BIOS settings haven't been changed (per @willywonka_dailyblah's answer), you believe the HD itself might be good and the cable isn't faulty, you may wish to either return the drive for service (if possible — assuming it's still under warranty, etc.) or you likely can buy an external SATA to USB Hard Drive Enclosure for ~$20 and attempt to transplant the drive if it is indeed the SATA controller.

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