External HDD freezes my pc and will not defrag

[TONY L]

Hi, can you help,
I've got an 80gb External HDD that i use to put most of my files in, but for some reason over the last week or so it tends to freeze my PC and i've got to wait a while until it unfreezes itself.

Also when i try to defrag the External HDD it only goes to 1%, and i gave it enough time to gefrag i think i let it defrag for about 9hours, and still only goes to 1%.

I've updated all my anti-virus, but did not pick up any virus and i ran my trojan remover that did not pick up anything either.
Can someone help me and tell me what the problem could be.
Many thanks
Tony

[Soopafresh]

Kinda hard to say for sure, but back up anything that's important. It might be dying....

[handyguy]

What type of computer is it?

You should run scandisk on your disks before you defrag, it comes with Windoz.

[TONY L]

Its a Packard bell, ill run scan disk to see what happens
thanks.

[lennyt]

After I installed my Ext USB HD I got the message that my USB ports had to be upgraded to USB Hi-Speed. I purchased a Belkin 2.0 5-port PCI Card to solve the problem even though the response time could be a bit faster, that would be solved by a faster CPU.

[TBoneit]

I'd run chkdsk and do a full surface scan of the external. It could be dying. A dying drive will tend to freeze the computer as it trys to read the drive. In XP open my computer, right click on the external drive and choose properties, Then tools and then error-checking and choose scan for bas sectors. Or alternatively use the run command and type cmd
then type chkdsk e: /R and hit enter. Substitue your external drive letter for the e:

Good Luck

[piano632]

From my own experience, if it's not one of the problems already mentioned, check for loose power and data cables inside and outside the enclosure. Also check for grounding issues, if the case is made of metal, make sure it isn't touching anything else metal.

[TONY L]

TBoneit, im doing the errror check on my disk, its on phase 2 at the moment is it suppose to take a wihile to check? just that it has only done about 2% and its taken about half an hour just to check that, another thing i done was



I've istalled and ran diskeeper, it analyze my internal hdd, but when i try to analyze my external hdd i get this error message:
Diskeeper has detected that CHKDSK is scheduled to run on the volume: HD-HBU2(F This is due to either a user request, or because the operation system has found errors in the file system. CHKDSK will run automatically during the next system reboot. until chkdsk is run, diskeeper cannot analyze this volume.
I've rebooted my pc but still wont analyze so is it possible i've got a big problem with my exteral hdd.
The HD-HBU2(F) is my external hdd.
Thanks

[handyguy]

Sure it can take some time if your external is set at USB 1.1.

[TONY L]

Should my usb be set to something different? although saying that it is now just gone over half way. I was thinking of reformatting my external hdd, but ive got about 60GB of files i would have to back up.
And there is know easy way of backing that amount of files up.

[Werder]

I've experienced kind of a similar problem with external USB2 drives... on a new installed system the drives work fine, but after a while they tend to become very sluggish and after clicking remove the hardware the "safe to remove..." msg shows up after about 5min.
In my case removing from the startup (with CrapCleaner) all these over time accumulated "update notifier and checkers" from software installs fixed the problem completely - now the USB drives respond quickly as on a newly installed system and the "safe to remove..." msg pops up after one second.

[TONY L]

But do i need to be carefull as to what im cleaning? as most of my files are in my external hdd.
I've only got a 20GB internal hdd, and backing 60GB of files from my external hdd will take some doing.

[TBoneit]

If you only have a 20Gb internal drive. I'd look at the USB and see what speed it is. Easy way, go to the control panel and choose system, then when that comes up choose hardware tab, then device manager, at the bottom of device manage look for the Universal Serial Bus controllers and click the + sign next to it to expand it and see if it shows a enhanced usb controller or usb2 controller. If you are running 1.1 it is so slow compared to usb 2 and will make a big difference. In that case go buy a USB2 card and install it.

[TONY L]

Thanks for that TBoneit, someone ask me what my spec on my pc, i dont know how to find my spec or what it is.
Unless its something to do about my hdd.