Hardware

Ask something
Discussion Locked

USB hard-drive trouble

0 helpful
5 replies

by matthew_law87

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Hi,

my USB hard-drive has been working for a while. One day it just stopped working. I plug it into the USB and a green light appears, followed by a brief red light, then back to green again. The problem is that the computer doesn't recognize it. Nothing on my computer or disk management. I have tried going to services and starting the local disk manager etc.

I have tried plugging the hard-drive into another laptop. There is sound coming from the hard-drive for a brief moment after I plug it in.

any ideas?

5 replies

by p.j.hutchison

I had similar problems before with my external USB drive. Turns out that the file system was corrupted. I connected it to another computer and repaired filesystem (I think I reformatted it) and it was ok again.

by shady108

can you dismantle the external hdd and take the drive out and hook it up internally to your pc? may be that the USB controller has gone faulty, but the actual drive is ok?

by p.j.hutchison

Yes, that is possible as the drives inside the case are usually standard IDE or SATA drives which you can connect normally to your PC.

by matthew_law87

Yea, I plugged in into another external hard-drive case. It worked, albeit for a few minutes. But that was all i needed for my files to be copied onto my laptop. I haven't yet tried plugging it in straight to a computer (i.e. not through USB), as suggested on one of the previous posts.

This discussion is closed to new replies.