I know I had run into a similar problem years ago with an SD card I kept some things on. Turns out SD cards have a little slider on the top left that locks or unlocks the card depending on whether it is up or down. Maybe external drives have something similar or some setting you can change when it is hooked up. Have you contacted the manufacturer about the problem to see if there's some locking feature that may have been accidentally activated? Might be worth asking

 

some people like those WD's, after they take them apart. I use Lacie Ruggeds, they are a bit pricey but fast enough I have no problem using them for Omnisphere,falcon, light Kontakt

 

It's an external drive; Western Digital - My Book 7TB.
https://documents.westerndigital.co..._book/my-book-new/my-book-new-user-manual.pdf

It looks like it doesn't have any special switches but like my other WD drive, however it does have a hole in the back near the USB & power supply connectors (one says "K" next to the hole and the faulty drive just has a hole without any letter indicating what it might be)

The manual doesn't say anything about that small hole in the back of the drive, so I don't know if it's just a hole to vent the drive of air. Although it looks like it has separate vents for that on the top of the drive. Who knows maybe in that hole there is some secret switch, I don't really know for sure. But the manual doesn't say there is a power switch or any other switch as far as I can tell.

 

Oh I knew a photographer a decade ago that swore by these Lacie drives and said they are water proof. It always looked like the drive was inside an Otter Box. I might have to go with these next time but they do seem expensive. Looks like it's worth it though.

 

fat or gpt formatted?
if drives > 2TB are fat, only 2TB can be used

 

What does fat or gpt mean? Sorry for my ignorance, I just literally don't know. I just looked it up but I still have no idea what Guido partitions are. That type of technical jargon goes right over my aerodynamic head. Lol Could you please explain to a simple guy like me?

Out of 7TB I still have about 1TB of memory left on the drive. Are you saying that no matter how much data I have available on the drive, depending on the type of drive it is then it still wouldn't have worked out? Man that's rough if true, what would be the point of selling such a large, expensive drive then?

 

Yes SSD die eventually too, but they have no mechanical parts that wear out. Also, there are manufacturer tools and CrystalDiskInfo that you can use to monitor the drive. So when the hard drive dies you can back up your data in time.

Install now " CrystalDiskInfo " is free and shows you everything about your connected hard drives, temperature, errors, runtime, etc. https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/.

Samsung and Crucial of the latest generation are very good SSD.

 

I had some external hard drives from Seagate for backup. At the 4 times plugged, the defect was there. I sent them in and got a new one with the same problem. I read on the Internet that a user has taken off the plastic - the cover and has pulled off the controller and they have reconnected as a normal hard drive. Oh miracle the hard drive was back. I later read that users have filed a class action lawsuit in the US against Seagate.

1.) With external hard disks, the error is usually due to the SATA controller.
You can remove the housing, the plastic, then you can pull off the controller in front, so that you have a normal hard drive.
You can connect the normal hard disk to another PC and try to save your data.

2.) The controller in the disk was destroyed by an incorrect power supply, and the disk may also have been damaged in the process.

WD Elements Desktop WDBAAU0020HBK GEHÄUSE ÖFFNEN | ELTON

How to open Seagate Expansion Portable Hard Drive

 

I would call this the correct diagnosis.
Those cheap ass controllers fail *all* the time!
Drive inside usually is fine.

 

Right ! In addition, cheap power supplies from a third-party manufacturer, which are no longer tested for quality and reliability in the fast-moving times. The end user can then become a detective to find the error. Much stress and time and sometimes the loss of important data are then the result of bungling.

 

I am going to go back and read all the advice you have received and what you've done so far, but my initial thoughts are that a 7tb hard drive / used up 6TB you may have exceeded the safe amount of drive space to be kept untouched and you have about 15 or so percent left by my calculations,

The files are scattered all over the drive, with not enough space left to defrag them.

UPDATE:- I have read most of the posts and viewed briefly over the others and what I gather is you have tried:- Scanning for bad sectors yet haven't found any. You are using win 7 and the drive in question is a 7 TB having used up 6TB.

I'm not willing to concede just yet this drive is bad.. It is corrupted yes, but that is for the reasons I stated above.

There are many defrag tools out there, but my suggestion for heavily fragmented drives is Perfect Disc. Just a word of warning, it could take up to 10 days to fully defrag that size and that so badly fragmented, BUT I still say there is nothing wrong with that drive which cannot be restored based on what I have read..

Also for future reference, to keep a drive running safely and smoothly, don't use up more than 70% of it's allowed space.

Oh and Should you wish to get perfect disc on utorrent.. and pick version 12 as it is best for win 7, that is up to you.. I don't condone doing such things :D..
Oh and yes.. in case you're wondering.. When you plug in the drive, Perfect disc will pick it up and tell you after running a scan the best type of defrag it should do..

 

Last edited: Apr 21, 2022

Maybe you could swap out the cable with one that you know works to get it properly connected to the computer collective.
Legend has it that some kid stuck his finger in a dyke (not the kind of dyke that would bite his finger off if he tried) and kept Harlem, Holland from flooding.
Sometimes it's the simple solution...but I'm quite the IT simpleton.

 

True. These sort of controllers especially for USB3 are mostly crap by default. The USB3 interface definition and quality control of vendors is just not strict enough and much too error tolerant. This makes vendors selling crap.

Spoiler: This is what RME says about USB3 :)

You won't never have this kind of problems with thunderbolt because there is no room for any errors in the defnition of the interface and the strict quality control of vendors.

But in this case I would suspect the OS or the filesystem respectively being the problem.
Everytime a user unplugs a drive without using the unplug utility or a program dies without proper shutdown NTFS (or FAT...) will run into problems with opened or partly written files. This is transparent to the user and Windows takes care of lost files so the drive and files remain functional.
Searching for bad blocks won't help! In this case there are no bad blocks to be found on the disk but - depending on the time frame the HD was used - hundreds or thousands of chunks of lost files. In Unix (Linux, MacOS etc.) these files are collected in "lost & found" in Windows you won't see them because they are moved to a hidden system only directory (even no read access) "System Volume Information" in the drives root directory. So you can't just delete the lost files by hand.
When this problem has built up enough Windows (NTFS) needs to clean that up by using the chkdsk utility. In the newer version of the OS you reach the utility by explorer -> right mouse on the drive -> tools -> Ckeck Harddisk.

If that doesn't help, I would reformat the disc without the "quick format" option (after I tried a backup on another disk with a backup utility)
And if even that doesn't help I would take the drive out of the external cabinet and attach it inside the PC's directly.

 

Last edited: Apr 22, 2022

Thank you so much for taking the time, attention to detail and will to help me. You and everyone else are going above and beyond to come to my aid and I highly appreciate it! I'm learning a lot about something I'm barely familiar with.

That's crazy and I can't believe I hadn't known that... I feel kind of dumb for being unaware of this.
Is this true of all drives? Even the ones inside my PC?

It would be a big shame if I can't use the drive. I will have to wait to buy another drive just as big to back up the files before de-fragmenting in case things go wrong, correct? That's insane if it actually needs that long to de-fragment it but I will do anything necessary to fix it. I will definitely keep in mind to keep my drive only full to 70% from now on. I definitely notice it works faster when the drive has extra space on it.

Could you please explain what de-fragmenting does to a shit flinging monkey like me?

Thanks, I will buy Perfect Disk as well. Thanks again for all your help!

 

I've had it plugged into another port in my pc in the past but I haven't thought to plug it into another usb port since running into the issue but I will try to switch ports and see if that helps, thanks!

 

When you install files on a drive (This doesn't apply to Solid State Drives and those should not be defragged) they go to wherever there is free space. Over time as you add more files to the drive, the computer has to search harder to find them. which as you said just now will slow the computer/drive down. However when you get beyond the safe point. Files not only cannot always be found, but the drive itself turns into a glorified paperweight (metaphorically speaking)
Some defraggers are pretty good O+O and defragger being 2 of the better ones. BUT, when it comes to seriously deep defragging. I don't think you can beat Perfect Disc

Oh and you wont need to remove any files off of the disc before defragging it. It just means it will take longer to work. (10 days for something that far gone is roughly how long I reckon it could take)
Make sure you do an analysis first as it will tell you what type of defrag to do, (any difficulties you can message me and I will go through it with you)

Oh and you know the bit about 'buying' Perfect disc.. Well lets just say you'll get used to my humour the longer you're here :D

 

Oh okay that makes perfect sense, thanks for explaining that for me!
When I get that software I will try to do that defrag. It's not going to delete any of my files is it? Maybe I should wait until match that hard drive with another large drive just to be safe, just in-case it is corrupted and the entire operation goes sideways? Thanks again for your help and I will definitely drop you a PM when I'm ready to get down and dirty with that external drive.

 

Here it is the world famous and free supertool, take that and you still save money.

DBAN Hard Drive Eraser & Data Clearing Utility
Free Open-Source Data Wiping Software for Personal Use

Darik's Boot and Nuke, also known as DBAN /ˈdiːbæn/, is a free and open-source project hosted on SourceForge.

The program is designed to securely erase a hard disk until its data is permanently removed and no longer recoverable, which is achieved by overwriting the data with pseudorandom numbers generated by Mersenne Twister or ISAAC. The Gutmann method, Quick Erase, DoD Short (3 passes), and DOD 5220.22-M (7 passes) are also included as options to handle data remanence.

DBAN can be booted from a CD, DVD, USB flash drive or diskless using a Preboot Execution Environment. It is based on Linux and supports PATA (IDE), SCSI and SATA hard drives. DBAN can be configured to automatically wipe every hard disk that it sees on a system or entire network of systems, making it very useful for unattended data destruction scenarios. DBAN exists for x86 systems.
DBAN, like other methods of data erasure, is suitable for use prior to computer recycling for personal or commercial situations, such as donating or selling a computer.

https://dban.org

 

Maybe you could swap out the cable with one that you know works to get it properly connected to the computer collective.@Lois Lane

That's actually a VERY good call.. Faulty USB ports can give the impression of a faulty drive too.

 

You're welcome. No it wont lose any files (At least that has never happened to me when defragging heavily fragmented drives)
I wont be around from the 1st to the 9th next month.. otherwise I'm happy to help.