External Hard drive freezes

[Wing Commander Fowler]

Again chaps,

bought one of these fab little 2.5" USB hard drives off ebay. It's a 60 gig unit and was wondering why a private guy not trader would be selling one....... Fact is that if I'm pulling data from it and running the odd other program the computer consistently freezes solid (ctrl+alt+delete to no avail). Any ideas? Is it gimpt or can sumfink be dun other than bung it in the bin or ebay again hehe!

Cheers

[Conan the Librarian]

Check the manufacturers website for any software downloads and whilst there, see if there are any FAQs. With a drive, be it internal or external - if you can't trust it above 99.99% then it is a paperweight and nothing more.

Also, have a swap around with the USB ports. Unplug and replug it to see whether it is correctly identified by your system. See what the device manager makes of your little bargain.

Hope it all checks out.


Conan

[Wing Commander Fowler]

Hi Conan,

system seems to be identifying it ok. It appears to be an ex compaq Hitachi unit and lives now in one of those "Vaio" (NOT) enclosures. Where should I look for the donload - compaq, hitachi or not sony hehe???

[marlowe]

i found that if i ran my external drive thru a powered hub it would freeze but if i plugged it straight into the usb on the computer it ran fine, dunno what the reason is for this as not computer expert but think it was some overloading prob

[Conan the Librarian]

WCF,the suggestion made by Marlowe is a goody. Sometimes, USB devices seem to play up on some hub ports but not others. I have the same problem with a USB headset and that responds well to plugging in directly.

Let us know how it goes


Conan

[Wing Commander Fowler]

Thanx chaps - not using a hub and same result on either of the 2 usb ports. Have two of these drives and the other one is a brand new 40 gig unit which behaves perfectly.
Have looked on the hitachi website and they provide a disc check program but it loads to a boot diskette and works through dos so not going to examine a usb device AFAIK. I could (but won't) get a caddy and link the disk up to the ide chain on my PC I suppose and then would be able to try the hitachi dos program to check that side of things...... I WILL try swapping the discs inside the 2 caddies I have and see if the problem goes with the caddy or the disc...... watch this space hehe!

\'twould seem to be the hard disc since swapping caddies carried the problem with the disc...... May have to wait for Hitachi\'s considerations now unless anyone\'s aware of any disc checking utilities which will function with a usb device??? :bored:

[Keef]

They said it. USB devices can be picky about power supply - they like a nice, stiff supply of steady volts, which most "powered" (read: underpowered) hubs won't deliver.

If it won't work properly plugged directly into your computer (and particularly if another USB one will), then you have a nice paperweight. Stop wasting time, and find another one.