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.

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Bad hard disk drive and robocopy

After my hard disk drive gave me CRC errors I wanted to copy one drive to another and picked up a new 1 TB hard disk drive. I am using the command: robocopy G: J: /MIR /COPYALL /ZB First it ...
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Seagate FreeAgent Portable Drive suddenly doesn't want to open

I have a Seagate FreeAgent Portable Drive. It was fine yesterday night when I was using it but this morning when I plugged it in, my computer didn't autoplay it and when I clicked it on the computer, ...
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Is it better to leave on or turn off external hard drive?

Okay here is my situation, I have a 1tb internal hard drive that is plugged in via USB Dock, and has external power, that I use for weekly backups, but my question is, is it better to leave this hard ...
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Can I boot Windows 7 on a USB drive attached to by MacBook Pro? If so, how?

I have a mid-2011 Core i7 Macbook Pro that currently is dual-booting a File-Vault encrypted OS X Lion installation and an OS X Snow Leopard installation. Unfortunately I need to keep both of these on ...
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External Hard Disk is not empty but files are not being displayed

My external hard disk has data on it. When I right click and see properties it says has 189GB occupied, but I am unable to see any files in it. It is of NTFS format. Can anybody tell me what's wrong ...
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Changing deleted partition back to NTFS without having to recover to another drive

Recently, I accidentally deleted a partition off of my external hard disk. I had a copy of Minitool Power Data Recovery left over when the same drive had become RAW about a year ago. When I selected ...
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I recently attached an external HD with eSATA in Windows 7. When I try to enable ReadyBoost, I click Test in the device Properties and nothing happens. Why?

There is a Test button on the ReadyBoost tab within the device properties which, according to help I've seen online, should test my drive's speed and display the results and whether or not I can use ...
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Maxtor 500GB external hard drive not being detected but power is going to it?

I have 2 * Maxtor Onetouch 4 Lite 500GB external hard drives (part no. 9NT2A4-500). They both used to work fine on my old laptop (an Acer) but I have not used them for about a year, since my laptop ...
ClarkeyBoy's user avatar
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1 answer
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Checking files on an external drive to whole computer for duplicates [closed]

I'm looking to use an external drive for a new purpose and want to see which, if any, files on it are not already on my main pc. I've seen comparison programs that can compare folders or one drive to ...
Ian's user avatar
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2 answers
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USB Storage is Write-Protected [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Remove the write protection from a USB flash disk I have a Raidon GR3630-2S-SB2+ External RAID enclosure that I've just hooked into my system. For some reason, it's coming up ...
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Cannot see files in my external HDD

I have HDD with a lot of video files. Usually I connect my HDD with TV to watch videos. Today I've connected the drive to my PC and noticed some hidden files, but nothing related to video. The files ...
Warlock's user avatar
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Recovering the data from a failed WD My Book NAS drive

My Western Digital 500GB NAS drive (which is my main backup device) has recently broken. Windows can no longer use it as a network drive (using Map Network Drive), and the web-based control panel is ...
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-1 votes
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Does Thunderbolt speed provide a benefit over USB 3.0 for an external hard disk?

Numbers imply that Thunderbolt is faster than USB 3.0. But, is there any external hard drive that can really reach this speed?
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How can I check whether USB3.0 UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) mode is enabled in Linux?

I have a laptop running Ubuntu 15.04 (3.19.0-21-generic) and an external USB3.0 2.5" SATA HDD enclosure which claims that it supports UASP mode (the S2510BPU33 model by StarTech). I have no problems ...
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Formatting : The volume is too big for FAT32

Formatting an external 500GB HDD took almost >6 hours that I started like: D:\>format /FS:fat32 F: The type of the file system is EXFAT. The new file system is FAT32. Enter current volume label ...
Caspar Kleijne's user avatar
27 votes
5 answers
175k views

Convert NTFS volume to exFAT (without losing contents)

I have a 500GB external hard disk which I use mostly for storing movies/music and some backup. Since I have some rather large files I use NTFS on it, but don't need the security/compression/encryption ...
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23 votes
4 answers
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Is it safe to remove USB media when a computer is suspended?

We are often cautioned against unplugging USB drives in case it is currently being read from or written to. When a computer is suspended, hibernated, or asleep is it obviously not writing any data; it ...
IQAndreas's user avatar
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18 votes
5 answers
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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 ...
user258346's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
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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. ...
Django Reinhardt's user avatar
14 votes
5 answers
120k views

What's the best tool to use to automatically backup selected folders from Windows to my external hard drive? [closed]

I have a 1TB external hard drive and I'd like to periodically schedule backups of my "Libraries" in Windows to the external drive. I'd prefer if it could detect what files have changed and ...
PhD's user avatar
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13 votes
3 answers
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Can I turn my external USB HDD into a wireless HDD?

There's a new league of "wireless HDDs" available out there, For example: The Transcend Storejet Cloud and the Seagate Satellite My question is: is it possible to make use of a wireless USB adapter ...
john's user avatar
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12 votes
6 answers
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Vmware workstation takes too much time to shut down

Each time I shuting down my virtual machine - it takes like 30 minutes for VM Ware to complete the process. The shut down is done, but it shows a black screen and doesn't respond to any command. I can'...
Serhiy's user avatar
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2 answers
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Windows 7 backup to 3TB Seagate external drive got 0x8078002A error

I'm using the Windows 7 backup and restore utility to create a system image and personal file backup to an external Seagate GoFlex 3TB disk. I got the following error: One of the backup files could ...
Zhang18's user avatar
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12 votes
3 answers
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External SSD vs. Internal standard HD for speed?

I am using a laptop for gaming because I am not able to build a desktop currently. I was thinking about getting an external SSD for the speed, but I was wondering if it would be worth it, as I am not ...
OakleafRanger09's user avatar
11 votes
5 answers
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Would USB 3 make a difference for a USB 2 5400 RPM drive?

I've got a USB 2 5400 RPM external HD. I'm thinking of getting a new computer with USB 3 ports. If I'm currently getting read/write speeds from the external HD on USB 2 of roughly 30 mb/s (both read ...
Gary's user avatar
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11 votes
3 answers
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A computer that fails to boot if certain USB devices are plugged in

I don't have an active problem with this but I am curious. Over time, my repair work has led me to experience many instances (repeatable and reliable ones) where a computer (desktop or laptop; every ...
jwarner112's user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
21k views

How to restore a failed external hard drive from Time Machine?

My external hard drive has failed. It will no longer spin up and therefore is unmountable. Thankfully I had added it to my OSX Time Machine backups. So, since disks are cheap, I can just go buy a ...
dacracot's user avatar
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8 votes
3 answers
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How do I turn a folder into a USB drive or mass storage device?

I have a Plasma TV with USB input that can play DIVX, etc. However, I would like to use some software to turn a folder in my notebook HD (Windows 7) into a USB Mass Storage device, so that I can ...
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8 votes
6 answers
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USB 3.0 randomly disconnecting and reconnecting

I had an old laptop that died so I have bought a new one. I have taken the 2.5 SATA hard drive from the old laptop and I have put it into an external 2.5 SATA enclosure usb 3.0 and I connect it to the ...
Willy's user avatar
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8 votes
3 answers
18k views

Uploading large folders to Dropbox from external hard drive

I've got a puzzling dilemma that I've been trying to solve for weeks. I want to backup about 500 GBs from an external hard drive to my Dropbox Pro account. My computer's hard drive is nowhere near ...
Daniel Miller's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
3k views

Mirror / backup laptop btrfs drive to sometimes connected external USB disk

I have a laptop with an internal drive using Btrfs. There are several subvolumes and snapshots on here. I want a copy of this drive to be made periodically to an external USB disk of approximately the ...
river's user avatar
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7 votes
7 answers
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USB External HDD NOT spinning down on Windows Vista / Windows 7

I have 3 external 2.5" USB HDDs - all from different manufacturers and with different capacities. I also have access to multiple Windows Vista / Windows 7 / Windows XP computers. My problem is that ...
Deepak's user avatar
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6 votes
3 answers
3k views

Which power USB hub uses if it has external power supply as well

I have 7 port USB hub with external supply. I tried turning it off by removing external power but then it takes power from motherboard and is still working. I have many external hardrives connected ...
Mirage's user avatar
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6 votes
3 answers
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Not able to see my hard drive in windows explorer?

but when i go to computer management and open the external hard drive(drive H) it opens from there
munish's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
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How can I unmark an external hard drive partition as being active?

I accidentally marked my external hard drive partition as active in disk management. I meant to change the drive letter but hit the wrong button. Whoops. What are the consequences of having done that ...
Mark's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
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Why is Task Manager using my USB drive?

After using the answers to this question: Can Windows tell me what is using my USB drive?, I found from Event Viewer that Task Manager was using the drive: The application \Device\HarddiskVolume5\...
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6 votes
7 answers
33k views

Prevent a hard drive from being formatted?

I have an external hard drive and I partitioned it in 3 partitions. I want do something on one of these partitions, so nobody can format it (its data is important to me). What should I do? I use ...
Am1rr3zA's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
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How to increase the speed between two external hard drives on my laptop?

I own Sony Vaio Z laptop with two external USB ports. It's quite new and has USB 2.0 support. I'm using Vista x64 on it. I also have two external usb hard drives, Iomega 500GB and WD for 1TB. Every ...
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6 votes
1 answer
10k views

Is it safe to delete the System Volume Information folder?

I have a 3 TB external NTFS drive I was originally using on Windows. I'm now using it on a Linux samba fileserver, and there's a folder named "System Volume Information" on the HDD root. Windows ...
That Brazilian Guy's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
9k views

How to 'fix' disk with 512-byte sectors, formatted using an enclosure that translated to 4k sectors

I have a 1TB hard disk with 512-byte sectors that I have been using through a USB disk enclosure for a good many years. However, the enclosure has now died. When I transferred it to a new enclosure I ...
HappyDog's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
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Is it best to partition a 1TB external drive? [closed]

OK – I've got the 1TB WD External hard drive from DSE (see post - http://forums.pcworld.co.nz/showthread.php?t=113070 ) Should I create some more partitions on it – from what I've read (not knowing ...
tuiruru's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
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Why does the speed decrease while copying from an external harddrive?

I have an external hard drive that I needed to copy about 30 GB from. 8 DVD image files. The copy started out at 160 MB/s, quickly went down to around 80 MB/s and then slowly during the process it has ...
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5 votes
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Is it recommended to partition an external drive used as storage?

I'm going to buy a 1TB external hard drive to use it as storage (not backup) and I'm not quite sure if any partitioning at all would be good in this case (i.e. System/Data scheme does not apply). So.....
Carla Álvarez's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
8k views

Message "file too large for recycle bin" on any file on external HDD Win 10

On my external only-files (no Windows) NTFS 2TB HDD Win 10 raises a "file too large for recycle bin" message on any file I delete. I formatted the HDD with the onboard Windows partition tool and the ...
pythonimus's user avatar
5 votes
4 answers
11k views

Is it safe to put an external drive on top of my desktop case near the hard drive?

I'm really embarrassed to ask this question, but it would be more stupid to lose data over this. Is it safe to place an external hard drive on top of my desktop case. I have a DVD/CD reader between ...
Jordan Parmer's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
11k views

How to measure data transfer speed between my internal SATA HDD and External USB HDD?

How to measure data transfer speed between my internal SATA HDD and External USB HDD? I purchased new Seegate freego USB HDD but when i copy somthing from internal HDD to USB HDD or viceversa data ...
metal gear solid's user avatar
5 votes
4 answers
655 views

Does backup software lock you in?

I just bought a new Iomega external drive, and I'm trying to figure out which software to use to manage backups. I am not looking for software recommendations. These are already available in other SU ...
5 votes
5 answers
157k views

My WD passport detected but not working

After installing Windows 7 32-bit, my Western Digital Passport drive is being detected, but I cannot see a drive to open it. I checked the drive on another system and it works, but not on mine. What ...
mj h's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
9k views

How to get data from “dead” hard disk drive? [duplicate]

I went through few questions (see the list below) but haven’t found the answer to my question... How to retrieve data from dead hard disc How To Recover My Data From Not Detected Hard Disk? How do I ...
Radek's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
4k views

How to turn on bitlocker on 4 TB USB HDD? [duplicate]

When trying to turn on Bitlocker on an external 4 TB USB HDD using Windows 7, there's error A device attached to the system is not functioning. in a rather unhelpful dialog, as shown below: Now ...
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