WD 1TB Problems

[tgd3]

For the last month now I have been experencing problems with my 2nd hard drive that I use to store music, movies, etc. The last time what happened was when I was in the middle of copying a file over the hard drive dissappeared (missing in My Computer) and I got a system error: could not write file... Then I restarted my computer and it came back on My Computer but when I open to the file I was transferring I'll got a "My Computer has encountered a problem and needs to close..." until I restarted a couple more times then I could finally access the data.

I have no idea what's wrong and any help would be great, Thank You.

Ted

 

[foxy_roxy]

1. Ensure it is connected directly to the computer to a USB 2.0 port not a USB 1.0 port as this could effect the performance and reliability

2. To rule out a faulty USB cable try using a different cable of same length as the original cable. Try connecting to a different USB 2.0 port on your computer.

3. Do not connect through an external USB HUB unless that hub is USB 2.0 AND has its own power supply.

4. Use ONLY the power supply that came with it if it has an external power supply (Dont use any other unless you know it has both the same voltage and current rating eg. 12V 500mA anything rated below that would not work properly)

There is a small chance that the drive itself is faulty/developing faults.

PS: Backup important data ASAP onto a different hard drive.

 

[jitpublisher]

Uh, is this an external or interanl drive, foxy_roxy seems to think it is external, I however thought it it an internal drive?
If it is internal, change the SATA cable. I have had instances just like this where the cable was not keeping good contact with the plugin on the board.

 

[sub mesa]

Check the SMART data for any failures, a disk might disappear if it continues to fail at some sector - or fail altogether. This indeed may be due to a bad cabling, in that case, the UDMA error rate as reported by the SMART data will be a high value and definately not 0.

 

[tgd3]

Sorry I didn't mention before. It IS an internal drive (sata). I will definatly try changing cables and see if that works.
How would i check the SMART data?

Thanks for your help

Ted

 

[sub mesa]

You can check the SMART data with any application capable of reading SMART data, and for windows there are alot of such programs. I believe the commonly known benchmark called HDTune also has a SMART browser. In either case use google if you need another one as there are plenty of apps that can do this.

 

[tgd3]

Sorry this has taken so long but i changed the SATA cable and i haven'nt had any problems since. in the future im going to keep some extra SATA cables around so i dont need to order one if it needs changing.

Thanks to everyone

Ted