Win 10 disconnects external drives at random

Hello all,

This is my first post, hopefully to the right forum.

Please help me understand what’s happening.

I recently bought a new machine - Dell with Win 10 Pro.

All data is stored on two external USB drives, which I will name here as N: and T:.

Each drive is backed nightly on two other external drives.

From day one, drive N: would disconnect (or would be disconnected) from the system for no reason, at random times. It has never once happened while it was connected to the old machine, a Gateway with Vista.

When that happened, I Would disconnect-reconnect the power supply to the drive and the computer would recognize it instantly. Today, however, “instantly” stretched into several minutes.

Yesterday, drive T: went into coma during a backup to a new drive, at about 65%. I killed the backup process, restarted the machine. The drive was not visible, I thought it died. This morning it was plugged in, became visible, the backup resumed (!) but then stalled at 81%.

Both drives are Seagate. N: is 4.5 years old, T is almost 3. I Know they will die one day, but so far suspect the OS.

Any ideas or explanation are greatly appreciated.

Boris

Check the disks with Hard Disk Sentinel.

Thank you, Anibor,

I will look into it a bit later. A few minutes ago, the T: drive was plugged in again and the system saw it, so I resumed backup. Will see what happens.

Maybe it is a coincidence that both dives worked fine with the old machine and are failing now with the new machine. Generally speaking, I do not believe in coincidences.

Somebody reminded me of the old chkdsk command. Would that be sufficient?

Thanks.

Chkdsk can be very slow with USB drives. It´s better to try first with Hard Disk Sentinel Free, you get immediate results.

I’ve been reading reviews of the Hard Disk Sentinel. It seems like a good program, but review stated it consumes significant amount of RAM and CPU, even when running on the background. Is it a real impediment to the performance?

Thank you, dalchina,

I will run the trial version of the HDS on all external drives.

Somehow the conversation shifted to hard drives (maybe it should have) while the original question remains unanswered.

Maybe it is a coincidence that both dives worked fine with the old machine to its last day and are failing now with the new machine since day one, but I read too many spy novels to believe in coincidences blindly.

As of this writing, the computer was unattended for some 2 hours. I just came back and do not see the N: drive.

Is it not possible at all that the culprit is the OS and not the drives?

Thanks!

Boris

Maybe it is a coincidence that both dives worked fine with the old machine to its last day and are failing now with the new machine since day one, but I read too many spy novels to believe in coincidences blindly.

Either poor power supply over usb or bad communication between usb controller and external device (insufficient signal quality/strength). The only way is to experiment (cables, external power supply if possible, different usb controller board).