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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Why is my WD HDD making a curious sound?

I've tried to access an 3.0TB Hard-Drive from Western Digital (Model WD30EZRX). The hard drive is not being shown by the operating system and it creates the following (repeating) sound: https://...
Adrian Preuss's user avatar
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3 answers
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REALLOCATED SECTOR COUNT 4948. Request for advice

I felt need of testing because some of my stored games were failing to boot properly. Quick test from HD Tune Pro app displayed 3 red blocks in one of the test runs and a full test always reports 3 ...
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3 answers
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How can I use the full 6 Gbit/s mode on my SATA HDD?

I am using an old WD My Book (don't know which version, but it's most likely the one from the video How to open a WD my book case) with a WD 2 TB HDD. It is connected via mini USB b <=> USB A to ...
Masamune's user avatar
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WD External Drive Stopped Working - Are there any Non-Destructive Diagnostic Options? What's the Best Course Of Action?

I'm having problems with my Western Digital My Passport 4TB External Drive. This model, specifically: WDBYFT004BBK-0A I was in the process of cross-backing-up data between my live setup (laptop), my ...
DarKo__xD's user avatar
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Should I be worried about my SMART values of my drive?

From what I gather, this is really really bad. I should probably replace my drive. But could I get verification that I am correct before doing so? SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 ...
Gavin Sochalski's user avatar
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Problems with usb3 attached drive ERROR: Transfer event for disabled endpoint or incorrect stream ring

I have a HP Microserver gen8 that I'm using for testing and some minor backup. This machine has a debian 9 installation, I'm planning to upgrade it to debian 12 when I will have some time, the machine ...
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Automated dismounting & mounting of external hard drive

I have an external hard drive for my backups, but to better protect it against ransomware, I want to have a scheduled script after the backup finishes, that dismounts the drive, and then a similar one ...
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Bootable External Drive Issue on Apple Silicon M2- Need Help Resolving

Note: It is working Fine on M1 machine. I've been encountering difficulties with my bootable external drive on my Apple Silicon Mac. I've tried creating the bootable drive using ASR, Carbon Copy ...
Umair Iqbal's user avatar
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How can I delete at least some data from an external HDD with write/read problems without physically damaging the drive?

I'm seeking advice on how to handle a faulty hard drive that I need to return to Amazon. There are many articles suggesting ways to wipe or physically destroy a drive, but these options aren't viable ...
Gecko's user avatar
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HDD suddenly disappeared from Explorer

I have an older Seagate 120 GB HDD, that I'm connecting to my laptop with an IDE/SATA to USB adapter. The drive is easily 15 years old, but when I connected to the SATA/USB adapter (which is powered),...
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What is the expected write-speed drop for SSDs [duplicate]

Basically, the problem is this: An external SSD (SATA drive in an enclosure) drops the write speed after some time when uploading large files/ a lot of files. I first noticed this when just uploading ...
J13C's user avatar
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Changing a folder icon on an external hard drive not working

So I've been putting custom icons on folders for years. I do it on my desktop. I do it on any external hard drive folders I have....just for fun and it looks better. Here is the method I use: Take ...
Matt Corzine's user avatar
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How to Programmatically Eject a Drive for Immutable Backups with Physical Connection?

We are looking for a practical and cost-effective way to enhance the security of our backups. Our initial idea was to go for immutable backups but unfortunately, due to cost constraints, we are ...
forumresearcher007's user avatar
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Dropped HDD seems to be working fine with Windows, makes clicking noise when connected to Raspberry Pi 5

I dropped my External HDD (WD My Passport 5TB) while unplugging it from my Windows PCs USB port. Drop height was about 1m/3ft and it fell on the floor immediately after USB was disconnected. I'm ...
Domi's user avatar
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How to save data from an external disk that died

A little under 4 years ago I bought a Seagate Backup Plus Portable 5 TB external hard drive. It's worked fine for years, but recently it started having problems - it would disconnect and then ...
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Mounting external HDD initiates high-resource background processes in Windows 11

It is basically not possible for me to unmount and disconnect my externall HDD because as soon as I plug it in, Windows Explorer uses massive disk usage (>100 MB/s) for about 10 minutes, and then ...
cst_ramirez's user avatar
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Unable to merge all partitions (including the Recovery partition) in my Old Laptop hard drive turned external drive

I have the hard drive of my laptop that was replaced with a SSD so I wanted to use it as an external storage space by combining them all into one. There were 3 partitions previously that I formatted ...
Chatrapal Singh Rathore's user avatar
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Disk Malfunctioned But They All Disappeared - Is This Disk Still Trustworthy?

I have encountered a situation I have never seen before. I recently bought an Seagate One Touch 5TB external HDD, and to ensure it would store data properly, I tried to run chkdsk. However before that,...
Mango's user avatar
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How to delete ProgramFiles x86 and Windows folders (external hard drive)

I’ve upgraded an old HDD on a laptop to an SSD (the SSD has already windows on it, last update, drivers etc, so the laptop is fully operational). I’d like to delete the ProgramFiles, ProgramFiles (x86)...
Monesh Rathod's user avatar
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 ...
J13C's user avatar
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My new laptop keeps killing externals

My HP Envy x360 2 in 1 laptop 15-fe0053dx that I got this last (2023) black Friday keeps killing my external hard drives. After purchasing it I also bought a 1tb Crucial external SDD and a 1TB Seagate ...
dems's user avatar
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ddrescue 0% recovered - is the external hard drive dead?

I assume my external exFAT hard drive is dead. There are many questions about ddrescue but typically the poster manages to recover something. I just want an analysis of my results. ddrescue shows: I ...
80432232's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
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Drive not appearing in Optimise Drives (Windows 10)

Running Windows 10 with two 16GB pen drives (mapped to F: and P:) and a larger 4TB WD external disk (mapped to W:). All drives work correctly, appear in Windows Explorer, Disk Management, you can ...
AlainD's user avatar
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Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD (1TB) not visible

I have a SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD (1TB), and have been using it for two years without any issue. This weekend I connected it to a new Synology NAS (DS223) and tried to copy the files over. The ...
Raymond Liang's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
35 views

External hard drive unmounts when spun down

I'm using a Raspberry Pi 5 with an external hard drive connected via USB 3. On boot, it is mounted with the following entry in /etc/fstab: LABEL=external /mnt/external ext4 defaults,noatime,nofail 0 2 ...
Thomas's user avatar
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1 answer
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Trying to understand SmartCRTL results: Normed value less than the worst value?

Please see the below output of smartctl for external hard drive. For attribute: Offline_Uncorrectable, the current normed-value is less that the worst value. How is it possible? It should be always ...
Porcupine's user avatar
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0 answers
72 views

SSD freezes when trying to copy particular file off of it

I have an external NVMe SSD formatted as APFS (Encrypted) that I store all my files in. I noticed that it started hanging a lot when trying to use it, so I decided to transfer all the files to another ...
Skeleton Bow's user avatar
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1 answer
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Using rsync to merge two source directories

I have my photos on an external disk, which I back up to my server by manually running a script that uses rsync. This script ensures that my external disk and my backup are in sync, which means ...
Jure Merhar's user avatar
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Files getting corrupted when copying from external HDD to self

For several years we have been successfully using an external USB3 2TB HDD (Seagate expansion). Several months ago we started having issues. I've made experiments and the issues are very reproducible. ...
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0 answers
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Eco / Stand-by / Spindown settings for LaCie Rugged Triple USB 3?

I have two LaCie Rugged Triple USB 3 external HDDs connected to a powered USB hub. When my Mac is 'on,' the drives are managed by macOS and go into stand-by correctly. But when the Mac is off, the ...
tagscuderia's user avatar
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0 answers
91 views

Is WD PR4100 supports Seagate EXOS X18z ST18000NM009J?

I'm using My Cloud Pro Series PR4100 as NAS storage. I'm using WD Red NAS Hard Drive 6TB×4 HDD right now. I want to change them with Exos™ X18 18TB×4. Is it support?
Mohammad Dayyan's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
103 views

How can I prevent Backblaze from frequently (every few days) reuploading my entire external hard drives?

It seems that Backblaze is frequently (every few days) reuploading my entire external hard drives. Backblaze already has the files on its server, so it's only scanning my entire external hard drives, ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
115 views

Lost the data I moved to an external drive on Windows

This happened to me twice so far. I have 2 Windows PCs with an external drive attached to one of them (Windows 11 Pro). It is a 3TB HDD that is about 25% full. Yesterday, I switched off the Windows 11 ...
TheBlueSky's user avatar
-3 votes
1 answer
84 views

Do all external hard drives require a power supply with positive polarity?

I am shopping for an AC/DC power adapter for an external hard drive, and I've noticed that the power supply required for the couple of the external hard drives I looked at is always with positive ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
105 views

Preserving Quick Access Pins and Libraries with Robocopy

So I've had an external drive that I kept plugged into my laptop that later started having connection issues. I decided to use Robocopy to transfer the files over to a new drive with (effectively) the ...
woashi's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
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Laptop RCA Connectivity

Is it possible to connect a CD/DVD Burner to a laptop computer with an RCA to 3.5mm auxiliary jack to watch movies? I have tried to connect this cable that I bought with the laptop computer to Flat ...
Kevin Morgan's user avatar
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0 answers
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Why does Windows 10 Task Manager say that my LaCie 750GB Rikki external hard drive's capacity is 4.5 TB?

Windows 10 Task Manager say that my LaCie 750GB Rikki external hard drive's capacity is 4.5 TB. See below. Why? Disk management confirms that the LaCie 750GB Rikki external hard drive is 750 GB, i.e. ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
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0 answers
72 views

Use redundant NAS drive as External HDD for laptop

I have swapped out 1 of my 3.5" SATA QNAP 4TB WD Red NAS drives and replaced it with an 8 TB drive. Now I would like to use the replaced disk inside an HDD enclosure and use it on my laptop as ...
user80's user avatar
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0 answers
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Windows 11 does "system reset" when trying to boot from external USB

I have a HP Windows 11 laptop. I made a live fully installed USB with Ubuntu on it. The USB is tested on Linux machines and it boots nicely, no problems. On the Windows 11 device (with HP Wolf ...
Boq7's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
119 views

Why don't I see some of the backed up hard drives on backblaze.com?

I am looking at some Backblaze account with the 1-Year Version History option activated over 1 year ago. The Backblaze Windows client indicates that at least one file from external hard drives with ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
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0 answers
100 views

Is it possible to use a cloned operating system through an external disk connected by USB?

I'm trying to clone a laptop's disk using an external hard drive in order to then use it on a different computer. The problem is that while the external HDD has enough space (1TB), the other computer ...
Case's user avatar
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0 answers
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Why can't Windows 11 read properly the SSD which I connected to my laptop using a USB connector?

I wanted to wipe an SSD that was previously in a PC with Windows 11. I connected it via USB to my PC and Windows is telling me "A specified device does not exist". I checked it using "...
Sergio Durán Vega's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
82 views

5TB external HDD showing as 3.64 TiB

I bought a new 5TB Seagate backup plus portable external HDD. When connected with Manjaro, it shows only 3.64 TiB. My calculation shows that 5TB should be more than 4.5 TiB. What could be wrong? On ...
Shew's user avatar
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0 answers
403 views

Western Digital External Hard Drive Isn't Compatible with Newer Windows Systems?

My old 10TB WD Elements external hard drive works with multiple old laptops without any issue for years and is currently still working. The external hard drive comes with an external power supply. But ...
user101998's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
61 views

Mac Mini requires password to create directory on external drive, but not internal drive. Huh?

MacMini logs-itself-in on boot. Plug in a utility external drive, drag a folder from internal drive to blank external, password required. Make a directory on internal drive, no problem. Copy a file to ...
Bill IV's user avatar
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0 answers
159 views

Copying from an SSD external drive to local drive operates only in bursts and eventually stops

I have a new gaming-style PC running Windows 11 and a new Samsung T7 Portable SSD drive. When I plug the SSD drive into a USB 3.0 port on my new PC and attempt to copy about 150,000 image files of ...
SimonKravis's user avatar
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1 answer
102 views

On Windows 11 Pro is it safe to use my computer while chkdsk /f /r /x perform on a corrupted external drive?

I have a couple of HDD that are damaged or with bad sectors. One of my HDD was BitLocker protected and I couldn't open it no more. I removed BitLocker hoping that I can probably access the HDD. Since ...
André Gravel's user avatar
13 votes
1 answer
4k views

Why are these SATA bus ports different?

I bought several larger 3.5" HDDs in SATA format and two of them have a different port on them and will not mate with the external enclosure. One of them is a 3TB and the other is a 6 TB. The 6TB ...
FORD Brian's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
72 views

Can I separate an external drive composed of 2 hard drives while keeping data?

I have an old external hard drive that is composed of two physical hard drives inside, but shows as one device in Windows. (it's twice the thickness) Is it possible to open the enclosure and put them ...
HollyLeaves's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
854 views

How to tell if a hard drive with Windows was used in AHCI or RAID mode?

I have a computer with a corrupted windows installation that will not boot into the OS. I am trying to fix the operating system, but I am not sure at this point if the drive was using RAID or AHCI. ...
jo99blackops's user avatar

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