Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Ext HDD freezes mid file transfer

March 13th, 2020, 3:02

Hi all, I hope you're well.
I found out that I need to send my Laptop in to have the screen replaced. Though they're confident nothing "system"-wise will be touched, that it's purely physical/hardware, I still feel the need to backup what I can.
However, Im running into big issue. There's a LOT of information to transfer. Im trying to do small batches at a time, but even then it'll me 150gb here, 600gb there, etc.
Regardless of the size, the Ext Hard Drive Im using (Seagate Backup Plus 5TB) keeps freezing (crashing?) mid transfer. Sometimes it'll get 10%, sometimes even 70%. The drive power indicator still shows it's receiving power, and you can feel that it's on, but the system either stops recognizing it.
Ive formated, run various scans including chkdsk E: /f /r /x from cmd prompt. I also went through Drive settings under Device manager to make sure Cache write was disabled. None of the scans came back with errors, and Cache write was in fact disable. Also, there is no clicking or abnormal sounds from the drive. Though the HDD itself has no power required (just direct plug into PC), I made sure my laptop was connected to an outlet, and when the problem persisted, I connected the drive to a dock that was plugged into an outlet, and then the laptop to the same dock. I also tried different cables including USB C and USB 3.0.

Lastly, I have 4 Seagate Backup Plust 5TB External HDDs. I wanted to see if it might be my system having the issue, and not so much the drive itself. I test to mother drives, and the transfers were all successful. I got lazy and did not test the 4th drive as I was satisfied that the other two were successful.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Re: Ext HDD freezes mid file transfer

March 13th, 2020, 11:24

Maybe try copying in smaller GB batches? Maybe 50GB at a time?
I do that with TeraCopy because it generates an ongoing report of what it is copying, the progress, the completion or error thereof.

Re: Ext HDD freezes mid file transfer

March 14th, 2020, 9:29

Return the drive for a refund if you can and get a new one. Its probably getting too hot, or some kind of USB transfer delay. or something wrong with the drive. As it sounds like. Seagate drives like to get hot and with their unsuitable enclosures it will get toasty...
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