New Seagate harddrive disconnects until **power plug** is pulled

When the HDD has been disconnected, is the disk still spinning?
Put your fingers on the HDD so as to feel it.

When my WD HDD has been disconnected, the disk is not spinning, and I feel no vibration.

Matthew Wai said:

When the HDD has been disconnected, is the disk still spinning?
Put your fingers on the HDD so as to feel it.

When my WD HDD has been disconnected, the disk is not spinning, and I feel no vibration.

Sorry, I didn't see there was a page 2, else I would've replied to you sooner.

I did not try that out (yet), though from the noise it makes when I pull the power plug I'd guess it does still spin until I do. Also, I noticed the "power on hours" counter is still going up after it disconnects itself. Seagate Dashboard says its Power Saving Mode is set to "Never", though one would assume it should stop once it is disconnected from the PC.

I did try out something else though:

When the hard drive disconnected itself this time, I didn't just go and unplug the power and plug it back in which had proved effective at reconnecting the drive. Instead I restarted my PC.

Logic would dictate if this is in any way a Windows issue, it would detect the drive after rebooting the PC.

It didn't. That verifies it's the drive's fault.

I even kept it like that for a few hours, plugged it into several different USB ports (including a USB 2.0 port) just as a test. When I pulled the power plug several hours later and plugged it back in, boom, harddrive reconnects itself.

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Also, while I don't have enough data points to tell what triggers the disconnect, I've tried to deliberately provoke it by slightly stressing the hard drive a bit, i.e., running these three processes simultaneously:

- run a batch download tool to download a moderately large number of files from an art gallery
- run a "search and delete empty folders" tool on a folder with a few hundred empty directories
- continuously create a large amount of ~100 byte sized files, about ~5 per second on average (as a by-product of running an actually relevant process, it wasn't meant as a stress-test tool)

I did not have to wait even an hour and the drive hung up.

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RolandJS said:

Amazon Prime US often works this way: The day I activate a return, the clock starts ticking. I have 15 - 30 days to actually repackage the item and bring it either to UPS or USPS. Once the item is scanned, the refund or exchange is triggered.

I did talk to someone through Amazon's help chat thingy today.

They said that I can return the item after April 10th with no worries and get my money back.

Though when I asked how long I have to do so, if there's a specific deadline, say, May 10th or something, they said I can return the item within the next 2 years....?? That... doesn't sound right. There must've been some misunderstanding. Unfortunately the chat log erased itself the moment the talk was concluded.

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Apologies to everyone else, I'll get around to replying to your contributions another time. :)

The Power On hours increases as long as the drive has power. This is so even when the drive is sleeping.

An update:

A month ago I finally managed to buy a second new external hard drive (Seagate 12 TB), with the intent to (among other things) evacuate the data from the "new" external Seagate 8TB hard drive I'd bought in early March.

...After three days of use, it had the exact same problem.

Brand-new 12TB external hard drive randomly disconnects after a few hours (as little as two), and is not recognized again until the hard drive's power plug is pulled. Un-/re-plugging the USB cable does nothing. Restarting the PC does nothing.

And I'd not even used it that much! I'd even given it plenty of long breaks to cool down! ...Although that was more for the benefit for the drive I was copying from, not the new 12 TB drive.


I figured I can't be that unlucky, and the quality control at Seagate can't be that bad, or else other people would be reporting this on Amazon. "So maybe it's an outside factor? But what could it be?"

It turns out, the problem was the power strip I had it plugged into was overtaxed with too many other power-intensive devices (TV, TV recorder, two videogame consoles, the PC, and then the hard drive).

Presumably the fluctuations this caused was something the Seagate hard drive's "onboard software controller" (excuse me if I'm using the incorrect term) wasn't programmed to handle, and it crashed the hard drive, something that only got "fixed" by "restarting" it via un/re-plugging its power supply.



In hindsight it's kind of a "DUH" moment.

I didn't used to have the PC plugged in at the corner where it currently is, and it was only supposed to stay there for "a while", so I didn't think too much about plugging in hard drives and such. And indeed, no other external hard drives had a problem with this setup.

Ah well.

In short, the solution was:

Get a separate power strip, plug that into a separate outlet, and plug the PC and hard drive into the new power strip instead of one that already has all those other devices attached.

Have been using the 12 TB hard drive for over over 2 weeks and no further problems of that type, even ran it for 24ish hours once without issue.




Only one caveat to declaring this issue solved and done; I have so far only extensively tested this solution with the 12 TB hard drive, not the 8TB hard drive that I originally had the problem with. (Mainly because I wanted to make sure I could return the 12 TB hard drive during its return period if something proved defective after all.)

So I guess it could still turn out that the problem with the 8TB is somehow not the same and requires a different solution, but that seems unlikely. So for now I'll declare it solved.

Thanks to everyone who provided advice!

I have a room that has 2 desktop computers, 4 external hard drivers (2TB, 5TB, 6TB & 12 TB), a printer and a modem/router. Sometime I even power a 3rd desktop. I use 2 UPSs and 4 power strips for everything. I anticipated possible power problems 10 or 15 years ago and had a dedicated power circuit installed for that room. That new circuit has 3 outlets in the room. I have never had any power issues. BTW, my house is over 60 years old. I wish I had a few other circuits installed back then because it definitely needs them.

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Try3 said:

If your connected equipment is trying to draw too much power then your circuit breaker ought to trip. You wouldn't expect the quality of the power supply to decrease - it would either be there or not.

If the power strips are of low quality then they may overload without tripping the main breaker. Most of the power strips I have have 15A resettable circuit breakers. I have never had any of them trip. I think my breakers are 20A so the power strips should trip long before there is enough current drawn to trip a main breaker.

Try3 said:

I can only guess but I'd expect to find an intermittent power connection somewhere [probably happening when something is getting too hot] rather than an overload as the cause of the problem.

That's certainly possible. I admit I was simplifying what I recognize now to have been a bit of a daisy chain of powerstrips and extension cables leading to a power outlet on the other end of the room.

The PC and hard drive were plugged into a powerstrip, which in turn was plugged into the powerstrip the TV, TV recorder and two video game consoles are plugged into. (The hard drive's and PC's cables weren't long enough to reach, so this seemed logical at the time.)

But the TV/etc's powerstrip is plugged into an extension cable, which, I think (though I'd have to move furniture to check) is plugged into a third powerstrip, that then finally plugs into the wall socket. What's else is connected to the third powerstrip? A fourth powerstrip, of course! ...This one doesn't currently power anything with any regularity though, just sometimes recharges my phone or e.g. Nintendo Wii U game pad. Used to have a lamp plugged in too.

I'm no electrician, and I've never had any problems with this setup, but yeah, I plugged the PC and hard drive's power strip into a different wall socket that had become available in the years since the TV was set up, and suddenly it works? Seems legit! ^_^;;;

HedgeToaster said:

That's certainly possible. I admit I was simplifying what I recognize now to have been a bit of a daisy chain of powerstrips and extension cables leading to a power outlet on the other end of the room.

The PC and hard drive were plugged into a powerstrip, which in turn was plugged into the powerstrip the TV, TV recorder and two video game consoles are plugged into. (The hard drive's and PC's cables weren't long enough to reach, so this seemed logical at the time.)

But the TV/etc's powerstrip is plugged into an extension cable, which, I think (though I'd have to move furniture to check) is plugged into a third powerstrip, that then finally plugs into the wall socket. What's else is connected to the third powerstrip? A fourth powerstrip, of course! ...This one doesn't currently power anything with any regularity though, just sometimes recharges my phone or e.g. Nintendo Wii U game pad. Used to have a lamp plugged in too.

I'm no electrician, and I've never had any problems with this setup, but yeah, I plugged the PC and hard drive's power strip into a different wall socket that had become available in the years since the TV was set up, and suddenly it works? Seems legit! ^_^;;;

There is where your problem is. As a general rule you should never plug a power strip into another one. That could lead to an overloaded circuit or potentially a fire. I know your circuit breaker should prevent this but why take the risk.

BTW, I occasionally do plug one power strip into another but only for a short time. If I do I am careful to only have a few things plugged in.

If you use an extension cord make sure it is heavy duty one if the power strip will have a number of items plugged into it. Remember a good power strip can handle up to 15 amps. That is a lot of current. You don't have to overdo it but just keep that in mind.