EXternal HDD Freezing Up My Laptop

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
X

XDSlayerDX

Distinguished
Dec 15, 2015
22
0
18,510
hi there tomshardware saviours. I have a problem with my WD External 1TB hdd, whenever i plug it into my laptop (Acer Aspire E1-522 running windows 10) it freezes it up, as soon as i unplug it, everything runs smooth as water. I cant access anything on it as it shows up as "Local Disc E:" i've tried formatting it, chkdsk even running EaseUS to recover things off of it but again, freees up and all i get left with is a not responding message and it shuts off. I've tried opening it in Safe mode with the exact same results HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.
in addition to this when i run chkdsk wit admin privileges, it comes up as my hdd is in RAW format and not NTFS. how can i fix this?
Also NOTE> There are a few things on it i would rather not remove however if i have to then i will with no regrets.

Cheers!!!
 
Solution
S
Have you tried the drive on another computer? I think you may be having a power drain issue since PC sees it it's only when you access it it hangs. It could be a power drain issue , if you have a powered USB 3 hub I would try that plug drive into that and then to your PC and see if it fixes your issue they run about $16 on amazon
Sort by date Sort by votes
S

skraemertx

Commendable
Jun 12, 2016
11
0
1,520
Does your machine boot with that drive plugged in, I have seen a few issues with my Asus Rogue laptop won't boot properly if a USB3 DVD/blueray is plugged in at boot time, its strange issue I have seen on a few other laptops but once your booted plugit in and its great.

As for Wd disk and raw vs NTFS, I have seen this also where disk has multiple partitions on it and depending on your bios it may not recognize a large disk partiion and it only sees the "recovery" or "utilities" partitions and in some cases it sees a mac formated partion only. Have you tried deleting all partiions on external disk and formating with NTFS or using convert utility to make it ntfs disk example convert E: /fs:ntfs .

Was this disk used by linux or mac before? It could be that its not recognizing your partion formats.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
X

XDSlayerDX

Distinguished
Dec 15, 2015
22
0
18,510



Never used on anything except Windows, my Acer and a Toshiba laptop, it doesn't boot up at all when it's plugged in, all I get is a black screen with a grey line like on the command prompt...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

skraemertx

Commendable
Jun 12, 2016
11
0
1,520
if you have the external disk unplugged from computer the computer boots fine I assume. is WD external disk powered or pulling power from the USB port? If its self powered there should be a power cord from the WD drive to the AC outlet on your wall/house. If its self powered it would only be the USB cable or potentially 2 usb cables cause there isn't enough power on 1 cable to spin up drive, I have seen WD and few other brands pull this crap if its got 2 usb plugs from drive side to PC they both must be plugged in to deliver enough power to spin up drive.

You say that once you plug in the external drive things freeze up, I have see this if it doesn't have drivers or is trying to load drivers for external disk, how long do you wait to see if it comes back?

Do you hear the windows "sound" saying it detected a new device ? the "da-ding" sound.. its it sound once or twice? like its plugged and unplugged back to back?

have you gotten all updates for windows? and installed WD drivers of any kind?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
X

XDSlayerDX

Distinguished
Dec 15, 2015
22
0
18,510


Yes, if it is unplugged the laptop runs smooth as water no kinks at all. Its a single usb 3.0, it pulls power from my usb port. I've uninstalled the drivers for the hdd and let them reinstall themselves, i've updated all of my windows drivers/loaders as well.

I get the Da-Ding sound once as in its plugged in and connected and it shows up in "This PC" as "Local Disk E:" it doesnt tell me the partition size (in this case 1TB) underneath. As soon as i try anything even refresh the file it freezes, unplug the hdd and it unfreezes and refreshes fine. I went on a search for the drivers needed for my hdd but couldnt find any sites to get them from?

Cheers
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

skraemertx

Commendable
Jun 12, 2016
11
0
1,520


 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

skraemertx

Commendable
Jun 12, 2016
11
0
1,520
Have you tried the drive on another computer? I think you may be having a power drain issue since PC sees it it's only when you access it it hangs. It could be a power drain issue , if you have a powered USB 3 hub I would try that plug drive into that and then to your PC and see if it fixes your issue they run about $16 on amazon
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom