USB hard drive suddenly dead.

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bigboy529

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Hi all
A friend of mine who's not very tech savvy had his USB hard drive suddenly die on him. No warnings as in funney sounds over the last few days, worked just fine till yesterday, then when he plugged it in this morning it was dead.
What I know is that it's a Samsung USB 2 hard drive, USB powered so probably 5400 RPM and it's about 5 years old.
He tried it on a different USB port on his machine, tried it on 2 other machines and tried a different USB cable, but it's totally dead.
What's the chance that it's not actually the drive which failed but only the USB interface of the enclosure hense it not getting power to switch on?
My thinking is if the drive failed, it would have still turned on and it would have spinned up, maybe with some weird clicked click sounds, but it being totally dead tells me it might not be getting power to even turn on.
I'm in Pretoria and he's in Capetown so I can't check the drive out myself, I'll probably have to advise him to take it to a computer shop to have it checked out.
 
Last edited:
LazyLion said:
If that still doesn't work, then put the drive in a dry dish towel and put it in the fridge for 30 mins.
Then try again.
Click to expand...
I'm curious, what would cooling the drive accomplish? :confused:
 
Funny thing a friend gave me his Samsung external HDD to look at it last year and I just forgot about it, then on Friday having some time I took out the disk out of the case and connected it to the PC directly.

The disks is functioning properly. And I returned the disk to its case and used a different USB cable to the one he gave me and what you know the external works like it never gave problems.

So you may want to test the disk by connecting it directly to the PC or try different cable...
 
maybe this will be useful

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff560019(v=vs.85).aspx

USBView




USBView (Universal Serial Bus Viewer, Usbview.exe) is a Windows graphical user interface application that enables you to browse all USB controllers and connected USB devices on your computer. USBView works on all versions of Windows.

Where to get USBView

USBView is included in Debugging Tools for Windows.

USBView is also available in the Windows driver samples repository on GitHub.

Using USBView

USBView can enumerate USB host controllers, USB hubs, and attached USB devices. It can also query information about the devices from the registry and through USB requests to the devices.

The main USBView window contains two panes. The left pane displays a connection-oriented tree view, enabling you to select any USB device.

The right pane displays the USB data structures that pertain to the selected USB device. These structures include Device, Configuration, Interface, and Endpoint Descriptors, as well as the current device configuration.
Click to expand...
 
bigboy529 said:
Hi all
A friend of mine who's not very tech savvy had his USB hard drive suddenly die on him. No warnings as in funney sounds over the last few days, worked just fine till yesterday, then when he plugged it in this morning it was dead.
What I know is that it's a Samsung USB 2 hard drive, USB powered so probably 5400 RPM and it's about 5 years old.
He tried it on a different USB port on his machine, tried it on 2 other machines and tried a different USB cable, but it's totally dead.
What's the chance that it's not actually the drive which failed but only the USB interface of the enclosure hense it not getting power to switch on?
My thinking is if the drive failed, it would have still turned on and it would have spinned up, maybe with some weird clicked click sounds, but it being totally dead tells me it might not be getting power to even turn on.
I'm in Pretoria and he's in Capetown so I can't check the drive out myself, I'll probably have to advise him to take it to a computer shop to have it checked out.
Click to expand...

Do not touch the drive or put it anywhere if there is valuable data on it. Book it in at SouthBit - http://www.southbit.co.za/book-in-your-hard-drive/.
 
Its a Samsung...go figure.Their products tend to breakdown just after the warranty has expired...
 
SeRpEnT said:
Its a Samsung...go figure.Their products tend to breakdown just after the warranty has expired...
Click to expand...

Thankfully their hard drive division was separate from their Android smartphone, TV and general electronics divisions. Samsung actually made some of the best hard drives before they were bought by Seagate. Samsung do still brand hard drives as their own, they're Seagates with Seagate model numbers, and Samsung S/Ns.
 
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