TWO external HDs not spinning up, what gives???

[sdsumike619]

I backed up some stuff to an external hard drive several months ago, and emptied another. They've been sitting on a shelf since then. I just plugged them both in, and they get power, but they're not spinning up to speed and coming up in Windows. I know they haven't been dropped or otherwise damaged (yes I've knocked a HD off a computer once and it busted, but not these two)

Is there any way to make these things work again?

[aedipuss]

plugged in and powered by what? if some external device i'd try hooking directly to the motherboard to confirm their death. some people have reported success with drives with bad bearings from freezing them over night. they run long enough to get a few things off before seizing up again.

[classfour]

If the drive was spinning up, you could go into computer management> Disc Management and assign a drive letter.

Not spinning up points to the drive or power supply being faulty.

[sdsumike619]

They're identical external fantom drives, I think 500GB each. One is empty, and the other has stuff on it. They've been sitting on my bookshelf since I last used them several months ago; no reason for them to have self destructed...

[classfour]

The only external that I've had to fail was a Fantom - so I've already had a bad experience with their products.

If they have a power supply unit with the LED, check to see if it's working. If it's internal, you may have to pull the drives from the case and cable direct via SATA (IDE not likely) to see if the drive is alive.

[sdsumike619]

I opened both cases and the drives inside are Western Digital Caviars.
Yes, the LED on the power supply (both power supplies) lights.
The blue LED on the drive lights too....This really pisses me off. What's the point of backing up stuff to a drive and storing the drive if when I plug it back in after some time, the freakin thing stops working!

[sdsumike619]

I took the drive out of the enclosure and hooked it up as a slave internally to the motherboard and voila, it's working fine (the drive with the stuff on it) So that begs the question, what is wrong?

[locotus]

Perhaps this is some silly solution but I used to have that problem with an Hitachi 25OGB Passport,
that actually is part of WD.
The problem appear when the disk was connected to USB 3.0, even if using a USB hub.
No problem with USB 2.0.

[aedipuss]

reboot the computer plug the drives into a different usb port and see if they show up.

[vhelp]

yeah, this happens to me at times too. in my experience, it was always the usb 2.0 ports. for some reason they bump down to 1.0 speed and so it is detected as not being 2.0 and fails. my only solutions were to pull the usb wire out and back in to re-wake it up. sometimes it works, and some not and i have to put into another (never used) port of a usb hub. i mainly use hub(s) in my system because only one (of the four usb ports) work as 2.0, the rest are 1.0 and i can't get them back up to 2 again so it seems. but i think your problem is similar. maybe pick up an inexpensive 4-port hub w/ power supply.

[cal_tony]

You could switch from USB to Esata or visa versa. I've had some problems with larger Fannon drives that require being powered for 5-10 seconds before I insert the Esata cord. Seems strange that the Fannon internals would fail on both drives at the same time.

Tony

[vhelp]

yeah, but i'm almost certain his problem is usb port related, like in my case. i have the 1tb drive (i mentioned earlier) that is connected to one of the ports on a 4-port powered hud. and everytime i shut down the system and reboot up, that drive (on that port) will not spin up. instead, it makes a chirping sound, untill i disconnect it and reconnect it. then it works. if i shut down / reboot again, its the same problem. that particular port is either too week or faulty at startup. that port is the one closest to the usb connecting lead, the one that is from the 4-port hub and going into the computer's usb port.