External Hard Drives Won't Work on Two Specific USB Ports

I have two external hard drives that I've usually kept plugged into two back USB ports but all of a sudden, the USB ports stopped detecting them one day. If I move them to other USB ports, they work fine. In addition, any other USB drives I plug into those two USB ports work fine as well. The ports and the drives seem fine but when I put those two drives into those two specific ports, they don't work. What's going on here? If someone knows and can tell me, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

I should note that one drive is a USB 3.0 external hard drive while the other is a USB 3.1 external solid state drive. Both are being plugged into only USB 3.0 ports. The two ports that don't detect the external HDD and SSD will detect regular USB thumb drives.

Caledon Ken said:

Have you tried a different cable between drive and port.

When you say they won't work have you opened up disk mgmt and confirmed drives are not listed (without a letter assigned)?

Are these drives getting power from USB port or are they externally powered? If from USB port do you hear them spinning up?

Are all these USB ports the same, that is USB 2.0's or 3.1's?

When you plug them in do they show as an error within Device Manager?


Ken

No, I have not tried different cables. However, the cables and drives work fine in other USB 3.0 ports either in the back or the front.

Nothing is listed in Disk Management.

These are getting power from the USB ports. The external HDD's LED turns on but does not spin. In other ports with the same cable, it does. The external SSD lights up too but the storage doesn't seem to be detected unless plugged into another port.

As stated above, all ports are USB 3.0.

There are no errors in the Device Manager.

Based on the questions/answers being given here. It sounds like there may be a power issue with the two USB ports. Do thumb drives and external drives have different power requirements?

Klaw117 said:

These are getting power from the USB ports.

I would never have large external drives powered off USB. It may work, but not something I'd count on long-term. Why they work on some ports but not on ones on the back of your machine is odd—usually back ports are the best.

If you can't plug the externals directly into a power source outside the PC, then I suggest getting a powered USB hub—ie it plugs into your UPS or power strip—and using that.

Did you add any new hardware shortly before this started happening? Something which caused the PC's PSU to become stressed.

Klaw said:

Do thumb drives and external drives have different power requirements?

Yes, thumb drives draw much less power.

I have an ole wd passport ultra which doesn't like 2.0 ports just not enough power to get its heart racing.

Thanks all. I suspect that the two ports in question can't deliver enough power anymore. I tried with a different cable in the same ports, and it didn't fix anything. Maybe it's because I kept those two drives plugged in all the time and the motherboard couldn't take it anymore. If so though, that's not a good sign for this motherboard. I've had it only for one year while my last motherboard was still going strong after four years with those drives plugged in all the time. Then again, I wasn't overclocking anything on my last motherboard, so there wasn't any added power going through the system. Maybe overclocking plus keeping external drives plugged in is a bad idea.

Whatever the case, I suppose this is a good lesson to get a powered USB hub if I want to keep external drives plugged in.

As for whether I had added any new hardware, no, I hadn't. There may have been a thunderstorm going on though that may have messed with my apartment complex's power. I can't remember entirely. I have a surge protector though, and the rest of my computer is fine, so it doesn't seem like the thunderstorm caused an issue.