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Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Next Hard Disk Question

I have a WD 1TB drive in an external enclosure connected by USB which has served as my wife's backup drive for a couple of years.  Suddenly, it is invisible.   I plugged it into my ThinkPad and it works fine. So I mapped it as a network drive on my wife's ThinkPad and it works fine for backup.  Any ideas on why?  I have a practical backup solution for her, but it seems strange.
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5 comments:

  1. Jay KominekJune 27, 2018 at 12:13 PM

    bus powered, or external supply?

    if bus powered, i'd suspect that maybe your wife's laptop has grown tired of powering it. (polyfuse has tripped too many times and doesn't want to allow enough current anymore?)

    if external supply, no idea.

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  2. RonMJune 27, 2018 at 4:57 PM

    Seagate and WD make 4TB USB drives that will allow you to make a copy of your old files and store for safe keeping. They use USB power now so you don't need a transformer. STEA40000400. It is best to keep backup drives off line unless you are making a backup. Too many keep the usb drive on all the time and it fails just as fast as other drives.

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  3. Rick CJune 27, 2018 at 9:18 PM

    Plug something else into the USB port and see if her computer recognizes it.

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  4. Zendo DebJune 27, 2018 at 10:10 PM

    Do you own a copy of spinrite? https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

    Before you run it, I would look to see if the drivers changed, or maybe just reinstall them.

    Something changed. Maybe in the drive, (see Spinrite above) or in the software.

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  5. Clayton CramerJune 28, 2018 at 11:25 AM

    Jay: plugged in through a USB hub which has external power.

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