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Zombie harddrive

747 views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  loda117 
#1 ·
Hello!

A while ago my old 500GB WD external harddrive suddenly disappeared from my list of harddrives. Reconnecting it would only result in something like a "Unkown USB device connected" message. I took the HD out of its case, disconnected the the little SATA to USB circuit board, plugged it into my computer, only to discover that everything worked fine. I ran some diagnostics with some software from WD's site and found nothing wrong with it. I reassembled the HD, plugged it back into my computer and everything worked again.

A couple of weeks later I ran into the same "Unknown USB device" error, and since I had already tested the HD, I reckoned it had to be a problem with the circuit board I mentioned (I am sure it has a name!). So I took it out of its case once again, and decided to use it as just a second internal HD. This worked for a few days until the HD started acting up. Trying to navigate around in folders was slow at times, and sometimes it would hang for minutes before letting me do anything. Coupled with some odd noises I had been hearing from it, I thought that it's probably about to die. Only a day or so later the HD disappeared from my list of harddrives. I didn't bother to take it out of my computer, and now, probably over a month later it suddenly showed up again, out of nowhere. It seems to run just fine right now.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on with it? I'll run the diagnostics program again tomorrow, but I'd be really interested to hear if anyone has any interesting ideas about this. Maybe it's still dying but just not quite done yet? I have no clue.
 
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#2 ·
Hello!
. Trying to navigate around in folders was slow at times, and sometimes it would hang for minutes before letting me do anything. Coupled with some odd noises I had been hearing from it, I thought that it's probably about to die.
Looks like a motor/spindle problem. Or maybe bad sectors appearing where the service data is written. Only destructive autopsy can be more assertive.
Get important files out of it and perform that autopsy if you want to see what is inside a hard drive. But don't keep on it any data that is of even smallest importance.
 
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