External Drive Issues

[Squid_uk]

Hey guys!

Recently I had an issue with my where the screen would no longer be visable, I borrowed an external SATA H/D adaptor to check the drive from the laptop. I found out that my laptop drive was still in full working order.

So I decided before going any further with the broken laptop I should back up the drive just in case! So I thought I would copy all the files I needed on my WD Elements 1TB external drive, this is where i have started getting trouble!

When I try to copy files from the laptop drive to the WD drive it begins the process then it seems to stop and the drive removes itself from windows stopping the process, then shortly after the drive reappears again. This happens no matter what size files and folders I try to transfer. I have tried using a different drive to transfer to and had no problems.

The weird thing is I already had some fies on the WD drive, I can view photos, documents, videos etc without any issues but it seems when I try to write to the drive it doesnt like it! And to confirm the drive does have enough space for what I am trying to copy.

Any suggestions what could be causing this problem?

[jman98]

Assuming that the drive that removes itself is the WD drive (you should have specified rather than making us guess), I can tell you that I have seen the "disappearing drive" issue myself and it was caused by poor quality SATA cables. Once I changed my SATA cables to higher quality ones with better connectors, I never saw the problem again.

[Squid_uk]

Jman98 yes sorry your are right its the WD drive which disappears.

I have tried using another USB cable that i know work and still get the same issue! I have just noticed that I can copy files/folders from the WD to another disk without problems but cannot do it the other way round. I just get and error saying: error copying file or folder, request cannot be performed due to I/O device error!

[nic2k4]

Try using a different USB port, preferably one on the back of the PC. Those front USB connectors can suffer from the same quality issues Jman98 mentionned.

[Squid_uk]

Nic2k4 I have tried that, even tried 2 other systems and still same issues

[cal_tony]

When all else fails, and sometimes even before that, I just reach for my can of contact cleaner.
Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

Also, like Jman98 I have one Esata drive that is just cable fussy. The spray seems to help whenever I reinsert that drive.

Finally, it wouldn't hurt to de-frag the drive and do a checkdisk with fix errors checked.

Tony

[Nelson37]

So does this SATA drive have a USB cable plugged into THE DRIVE ITSELF or is the SATA DRIVE connected with a SATA cable?

Check the SATA cable inside the drive cage, also try directly connecting the drive as the interface on the drive cage may be going bad, this is fairly common.

[Squid_uk]

Nelson37, the SATA is connected via USB, but its the WD elements (also USB) drive which is playing up. I have managed to transfer data from the SATA drive to a WD Passport drive with no problems

[Bjs]

If the drives mft table is at fault one should not run check disk with the f option enabled ... ive seen where this leads to further data corruption making data recovery a nightmare even with the right tools.

The problem is two part

1: External enclosure
2: The drive in question

You should try another sata drive in the enclosure and see if the same symptom appears ... if so then one has to assume the external enclosures interface controller is in questionable state.

Should the problem not appear using another sata drive then move onto stage II.

Stage II involves ... in general for any serious data recovery ... connecting the drive at fault directly into the system being used to recover the data ... removing obstacles which may lead to faulty communication.

Before physically connecting the drive to the system take a sniff of the control board ... if it smells like its been cooking then it may be your looking to replace the control board before recovery of data takes place ... simple to replace.

Under a windows system i recommend Active@ Hard Disk Monitor , a freeware tool which might give a better indication as to the drives health status condition.

There are a number of recovery utilities around.

====

Where issues under windows systems appear you should move onto testdisk ... thou for any large amounts of data recovery I recommend having a ubuntu system setup with testdisk where space is not at a premium ... the more the better.

[Squid_uk]

I think I may have caused some confusion somewhere.

The drive I am having issues with is the External WD Elements USB drive. The issue seems to occur when trying to write data to the drive.

I have tried write data to the WD drive from 3 other drives (SATA and USB) and still get the same problem.

The SATA drive mentioned earlier in the post has no problems and functions correctly.