Extenal hard drive problem.

[dafoe]

Last fall I bought a WD 500 GB external because it was on sale for $90. I didn't really need it, so it sat in the box for a couple of months. I finally hooked it up and ended up putting around 400 GB worth of files on it.

Then it started giving me errors. It would say "directory is corrupt and unreadable" I would unplug the hard drive and reconnect and it would be fine. I did lose some stuff, but most of the data I was able to burn onto DVDs.

It seems to be getting worse. Anytime I burn a DVD from the HD, it gets corrupted and I have to unplug and reconnect. I can't transfer to the PC because the files will get "corrupt" during the transfer

The only 2 possible issues I can see are That my PC doesn't have USB so I am connecting through a USB 2.0 PCI card. Also the hard drive is formatted in FAT32 mode and not NTFS. I don't know if that would make any difference. One machine is runnning XP and the other Vista.

I don't know. Is this thing just a defective POS? Any advice would be appreciated. I was thinking about going to hard drive for permanent storage. So this really has me freaked out.

[INFRATOM]

You have to get all your data out and reformat it. Use NTFS since FAT32 has 2 gig file size limitation. USB PCI card is the same or better than motherboard USB but if your motherboard doesn't have USB it must be old and your problem could be from your system being too slow. At the end even though the drive is defective it does not worth repairing, get the HD out or see if you can run WD diagnostic on it. If you run the serial number at the website it could still be under warranty and if it is defective they might replace it.

[guns1inger]

FAT32 has a 4 GB filesize limit, not 2 GB.

I have seen this type of behaviour when multiple USB storage devices are connected at the same time, and don't play nice on the link. My daughter has a cheap chinese "MP4" player that causes this type of message on one of my drives when they are connected at the same time. If they are not connected at the same time, there is no issue.

Do you have anything else connected via USB when these issues occur ?

[INFRATOM]

Oops, yes it is 4 gig limit sorry. You don't copy DVD image do you? Does the same thing happen on both computers or only on XP. Give us specs of your computer. If you have XP on an old computer with low memory and weak power supply maybe that's why but if it does that on Vista machine which I guess is newer too it could be defective.

[redwudz]

It sounds like you are having the same problem on two computers with the drive. That would make me think USB may not be the problem. I would also suggest you dump all the data just in case it is failing. You can try WDs diagnostic program, but I would save the data first. WD, Seagate or any drive out there can fail at any time. It's just a roll of the dice.

Vista is telling me my Seagate boot HDD on one of my newest computers is failing. I have my doubts, but I'm moving everything off it as soon as possible and backing up the OS/Software to another drive.

And I would also follow the advice to check if it's under warranty.

[dafoe]

Thanks for all the replies. No, I don't have any isos on the drive. I also don't have any other usb devices connected except my speakers.

I have an old system with p4 1.7 ghz/ d850mv/ 256 mb of rdram. Without checking, I believe the power supply is 300 watts. But I was having the same problems with the Vista laptop.

I reformatted the drive with NTFS file system and it was fine for about an hour. So I don't know. I sent in a warranty claim with WD.