Seagate external drive issue - randomly disconnects, reconnects.

[TwentyTwelve]

Alright so i'm making this because i'm generally curious what's been happening, I use a seagate external hard drive for my laptop and only use it when watching movies, it's been fine for the most part but as of 2 weeks or so ago I've been having issues with it.

Before i explain i will mention that i made a post here about my laptop being broke around the same time, I broke the battery connector on the circuit board off, i got it repaired and the battery works fine.

So basically, I'm watching movies and i randomly hear the disconnect/reconnect sound which then causes my movie to crash/stop mid way and i have to restart it after the drive reconnects, i thought maybe i was knocking the drive but it started to happen when just idle and not moving and such.

I was changing settings such as high performance power plan of turning off drives after so much time, I disabled all the features that would "put to sleep" the drive or USB slots just to be sure.

Since then the issue didn't happen but it was only a few days and then today i was watching movies and i turned the laptop off, i couldn't sleep so i turned it back on and noticed my drive was not being detected at all despite the power light being on.

I decided to test all usb slots on the laptop - nothing, tested on my pc and it instantly works.

I looked into things and i ended up just going into device manager and showing all hidden devices, i uninstalled any usb device that was not in use, there was a lot of usb things, as if the drive has been making multiple profiles?

Either way after uninstalling all the inactive usb things and the seagate hard drive from the device manager, the hard drive is working again.



I'm just wondering what could cause this behavior? Is it possibly the damaged battery i had fixed, or just coincidence its started around the same time i got it fixed?
Why would the drive make a ton of usb "profiles" under usb storage in device manager, they was all inactive because the usb device wasn't in use apparently but i'm sure it's from the external drive, i don't plug that many things in that require usb power.

[Coldkil]

From what you're saying, it just looks like either the disk itself or the case it's into is dying. Anyway since you've tried it on the pc and it istantly works, i'm gonna exclude also that.

Since you repaired the battery connector it may be some kind of voltage issue - maybe the usb ports don't receive the voltage required or it's not reliable so connection drops. I'd try on another pc againand check if it's consistently your laptop only doing this.

Also beware: if it really is a power issue with the usb ports on your laptop, i would avoid using the disk completely; it's possible you're going to fry the HDD anyway.

[TwentyTwelve]

From what you're saying, it just looks like either the disk itself or the case it's into is dying. Anyway since you've tried it on the pc and it istantly works, i'm gonna exclude also that.

Since you repaired the battery connector it may be some kind of voltage issue - maybe the usb ports don't receive the voltage required or it's not reliable so connection drops. I'd try on another pc againand check if it's consistently your laptop only doing this.

Also beware: if it really is a power issue with the usb ports on your laptop, i would avoid using the disk completely; it's possible you're going to fry the HDD anyway.

I'm hoping it's neither tbh because the laptop it self isn't old and was quite expensive, although i can see it maybe being the case because of the broken battery connector. It is fixed back on and battery charges and everything works as it should though so not sure.

I can't really say it is the usb ports dying either because when the hard drive decided to fully not work (ON THE LAPTOP) i tried all the usb ports including the one i have a sound amp plugged into at all times and is working everytime my laptop is on. Also since the hard drive was working but not being detected on the laptop (but instantly was on the pc) doesn't this prove it's not really dying but a complication between the laptop and drive?

Whatever the case, i'll keep an eye and see if the behavior continues, the drive not being found at all until i uninstalled all the drivers seemed to be because of the insane amount of duplicated drivers, which i assume was from it disconnecting and reconnecting, i want to see if this happens again after i disabled power saving options to turn off usb devices and such.

[Coldkil]

Whatever the case, i'll keep an eye and see if the behavior continues, the drive not being found at all until i uninstalled all the drivers seemed to be because of the insane amount of duplicated drivers, which i assume was from it disconnecting and reconnecting, i want to see if this happens again after i disabled power saving options to turn off usb devices and such.

Yes, Windows does make a new devise installation each time you plug it on a different port. That's why you see that amount of inactive devices. If the issue is limited to the laptop, it's either a general power/lines issue due to the power connector fix or it's software related which means windows reinstallation time.