Having an external hard disk problem is thankfully quite a rare thing

But it can happen, what if you have your external hard disk fail
what is the next step?

To begin with an external hard disk is nothing special in terms of hardware which means (its just a standard hard disk in a caddy which converts the hard drives interface to USB in most cases) most external hard disk error messages are quite easy to fix for most computer users.

Does the problem lie with the external disk or your computer?

Easiest way to ascertain where an external hard disk problem lies is to plug the external disk into another computer.

If the disk works when connected to another computer then its a problem with your computer, the most common issue is when 2 devices try to use the same drive letter, you can check this by going to disk management (right click on my computer and select manage, disk management)

Still cannot see the disk?

Windows has a built in driver database, if this ever becomes corrupt or gets deleted Windows will have problems installing the most basic hardware, read our article on this below.

If you have ascertained that the external hard disk problem lies with the disk itself connect the disk.

Can you feel or hear the drive spinning? If not this is a bad sign; you now need to find out if the issue is the actual drive or the caddy.

If the drive is making unusual noises such as being louder than normal, constant periods of uniform whining or just a constant clicking sound then the drive will have to be replaced as it has developed a physical problem.

Perhaps the most common external hard disk problem is lack of, or no power

Ensure that the drive is receiving power if it is powered from a mains adapter, if its one of the smaller caddys it may be powered directly from the USB port.

In some cases the USB port may not provide enough power for the drive and it may keep cutting out, if this is the case a dual header USB cable could be the answer, this type of cable splits the USB connection so it can use two of the computers USB ports, this in effect doubles the power to the drive.

USB Dual header cable

Using a USB Double Header Cables Doubles Power

As you can see dual USB connectors which give double the power output to an external hard drive

If the drive spins but you have trouble reading from the disk if possible the best fix is to repartition and format the drive, this will of course wipe any data, but it will also fix any errors.

To delete the drives partition and reformat it checkout our article on this below

If you need to recover or repair an external hard disk error there are a number of tools which are provided with Windows that are pretty good at this.

The best I have found personally is CHKDSK or checkdisk as its known, this will scan the hard drive looking for read problems, and when it encounters any it will attempt to move the data so it can be read.

If you need to replace the hard disk itself this is pretty straight forward you just need to know the type of disk to purchase. There are 4 types

Firstly the physical size of the disk, it will either be 2.5 or 3.5 inch

Next you need to know the interface type, this will either be serial or IDE

Serial / SATA Interface                      IDE Interface

Hard Drive Interface Types

Once you manage to recover any data its still worth reformatting the drive to remove any such errors.

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