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External HDD causes problems. Help!

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Intel 530 series 120GB SSD

 

 

SSD is set as the boot drive. I don't have any choices now, I just have this 1TB hard drive or I have nowhere to install these games to. I'm looking forward to buy an internal HDD, maybe a WD Red or Black 2TB

Well, get an internal hard drive, as that is your best option, as installing games on external drives is not the greatest idea, as they are not exactly designed to be constantly having something running off of it. They are more designed for being used as backup or just file storage. So, get a WD black (your choice of capacity). If you wan more storage and don't mind waiting logner for it to load, get a massive WD green drive for the same money you would spend on a smaller capactiy WB black.
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Few days ago I installed some games to my external WD My Book Essential 1TB USB3 hard drive (my system drive is a 120GB SSD). Started playing, everything seems alright. But yesterday I tried to play a game from it and it crashed after some time. Tried relaunching it - shows me an error! Okay. Then I opened up explorer, tried to explore the drive and the OS froze.. Restarted the machine. After this situation, if I leave my HDD plugged in, the PC just won't boot to OS. Tried that with another game (Portal 2) - after few hours it just gave me a BSOD.

CrystalDiskMark shows that everything is alright. My next try was to defrag it. Defraggler said that it is 9% fragmented, I decided to try the quick defrag. It was going well but later it stuck on some stage at 99%. After 5 minutes, nothing new. I noticed that the LED on the external HDD wasn't blinking. Tried to open the explorer and the OS froze.

What would be the solution for this problem?

I'm pretty sure that the HDD is dying. I have a lot of important data on it. Maybe I should mention that it is ~82% full, the HDD is 5 years old. The OS is Windows 8.1 Pro x64.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry for my bad English!
i5-4590 | Sabertooth Z97 mk2 | Intel HD 4600 | ADATA XPG V1 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 | Intel 530 120GB | Cooler Master N600 | Seasonic G-450 | Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 | Win8.1 Pro x64

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It is not booting to OS when the external drive is plugged in because it is higher in boot order than you SSD. Get another external drive, clone the old drive to it, and use the new drive. It may be losing some data and spiting out an error code because some data is missing or something

“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”

- Cave Johnson, founder and CEO of Aperture Science, in Portal 2

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Also, what SSD are you using in your system?

“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”

- Cave Johnson, founder and CEO of Aperture Science, in Portal 2

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Go into your BIOS and make sure that your SSD is set as your boot drive. As well try using blue screen viewer to google the bug and driver that is causing the crash.

 

However I would't use externals for games. I would buy a 7200 RPM 1TB drive and throw it in there.

CPU: i7 5820K @ 4.00GHz | Mobo: ASUS X99-DELUXE LGA 2011-v3 | RAM: Corsair LPX 64GB Quad-Channel DDR4 @ 2400MHz | GPU: GTX 970 x2 SLI | Storage: 250 GB AMD SSD x 4 Raid 0

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Also, what SSD are you using in your system?

Intel 530 series 120GB SSD

 

 

Go into your BIOS and make sure that your SSD is set as your boot drive. As well try using blue screen viewer to google the bug and driver that is causing the crash.

 

However I would't use externals for games. I would buy a 7200 RPM 1TB drive and throw it in there.

SSD is set as the boot drive. I don't have any choices now, I just have this 1TB hard drive or I have nowhere to install these games to. I'm looking forward to buy an internal HDD, maybe a WD Red or Black 2TB

Sorry for my bad English!
i5-4590 | Sabertooth Z97 mk2 | Intel HD 4600 | ADATA XPG V1 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 | Intel 530 120GB | Cooler Master N600 | Seasonic G-450 | Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 | Win8.1 Pro x64

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Intel 530 series 120GB SSD

 

 

SSD is set as the boot drive. I don't have any choices now, I just have this 1TB hard drive or I have nowhere to install these games to. I'm looking forward to buy an internal HDD, maybe a WD Red or Black 2TB

Well, get an internal hard drive, as that is your best option, as installing games on external drives is not the greatest idea, as they are not exactly designed to be constantly having something running off of it. They are more designed for being used as backup or just file storage. So, get a WD black (your choice of capacity). If you wan more storage and don't mind waiting logner for it to load, get a massive WD green drive for the same money you would spend on a smaller capactiy WB black.

“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”

- Cave Johnson, founder and CEO of Aperture Science, in Portal 2

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Few days ago I installed some games to my external WD My Book Essential 1TB USB3 hard drive (my system drive is a 120GB SSD). Started playing, everything seems alright. But yesterday I tried to play a game from it and it crashed after some time. Tried relaunching it - shows me an error! Okay. Then I opened up explorer, tried to explore the drive and the OS froze.. Restarted the machine. After this situation, if I leave my HDD plugged in, the PC just won't boot to OS. Tried that with another game (Portal 2) - after few hours it just gave me a BSOD.

CrystalDiskMark shows that everything is alright. My next try was to defrag it. Defraggler said that it is 9% fragmented, I decided to try the quick defrag. It was going well but later it stuck on some stage at 99%. After 5 minutes, nothing new. I noticed that the LED on the external HDD wasn't blinking. Tried to open the explorer and the OS froze.

What would be the solution for this problem?

I'm pretty sure that the HDD is dying. I have a lot of important data on it. Maybe I should mention that it is ~82% full, the HDD is 5 years old. The OS is Windows 8.1 Pro x64.

Thanks in advance.

 

 

Hey RedWarrior,
 
Sorry to hear about the drive. I would suggest checking the drive with WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool to see how is its health. I would run both the quick and the extended tests the check the S.M.A.R.T. status as well as for any bad sectors. Here's a link:http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=KPUmqZI would also perform a full backup as soon as possible. 
What is the drive's exact model? If it happens to feature hardware encryption, I would strongly advise you not to remove it from the enclosure as it would not be able to be read.
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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Hey RedWarrior,
 
Sorry to hear about the drive. I would suggest checking the drive with WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool to see how is its health. I would run both the quick and the extended tests the check the S.M.A.R.T. status as well as for any bad sectors. Here's a link:http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=KPUmqZI would also perform a full backup as soon as possible. 
What is the drive's exact model? If it happens to feature hardware encryption, I would strongly advise you not to remove it from the enclosure as it would not be able to be read.
 
Captain_WD.

 

Thanks for your response! The hard drive inside is WDC WD10EADX-00TDHB0. Gonna try your suggested diagnostics :)

Sorry for my bad English!
i5-4590 | Sabertooth Z97 mk2 | Intel HD 4600 | ADATA XPG V1 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 | Intel 530 120GB | Cooler Master N600 | Seasonic G-450 | Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 | Win8.1 Pro x64

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Thanks for your response! The hard drive inside is WDC WD10EADX-00TDHB0. Gonna try your suggested diagnostics :)

 

 

The drive appears to be an older WD Caviar Green. What is the model of the external drive (the My Book Essential)? I would strongly suggest checking if it has a hardware encryption feature and, if it does, not to remove the drive out of the enclosure as it would be impossible to read any data off of it. Post the results of the diagnostic utility when you are ready with them. :)
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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The drive appears to be an older WD Caviar Green. What is the model of the external drive (the My Book Essential)? I would strongly suggest checking if it has a hardware encryption feature and, if it does, not to remove the drive out of the enclosure as it would be impossible to read any data off of it. Post the results of the diagnostic utility when you are ready with them. :)
 
Captain_WD.

 

The device is My Book 1130 USB Device, if that's what you asked for. I just can see my P/N and S/N on the enclosure itself, CrystalDiskInfo shows me HDD model, device name and S/N. I'll try the diagnostics, but I want to make sure that it won't mess up the data inside. Is it safe to run the Quick Test?

Sorry for my bad English!
i5-4590 | Sabertooth Z97 mk2 | Intel HD 4600 | ADATA XPG V1 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 | Intel 530 120GB | Cooler Master N600 | Seasonic G-450 | Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 | Win8.1 Pro x64

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The device is My Book 1130 USB Device, if that's what you asked for. I just can see my P/N and S/N on the enclosure itself, CrystalDiskInfo shows me HDD model, device name and S/N. I'll try the diagnostics, but I want to make sure that it won't mess up the data inside. Is it safe to run the Quick Test?

 

Yes, as long as you don't remove the drive outside the case, you can perform the diagnostic tests (both the quick and the extended). 

 

Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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Yes, as long as you don't remove the drive outside the case, you can perform the diagnostic tests (both the quick and the extended). 

 

Captain_WD.

Quick test: PASS, Extended test: PASS. Hmm...

According to the tests, everything seems to be alright. Here's my SMART data if that helps. I'm confused...

Sorry for my bad English!
i5-4590 | Sabertooth Z97 mk2 | Intel HD 4600 | ADATA XPG V1 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 | Intel 530 120GB | Cooler Master N600 | Seasonic G-450 | Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 | Win8.1 Pro x64

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Quick test: PASS, Extended test: PASS. Hmm...

According to the tests, everything seems to be alright. Here's my SMART data if that helps. I'm confused...

 

Well, the S.M.A.R.T. data looks OK to me. Are you able to test the drive on another computer? Could you also post a screenshot of how the drive is seen in device manager and disk management? I would also check if the latest OS updates and drivers are installed on the system as well as the latest firmware of the drive.
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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Well, the S.M.A.R.T. data looks OK to me. Are you able to test the drive on another computer? Could you also post a screenshot of how the drive is seen in device manager and disk management? I would also check if the latest OS updates and drivers are installed on the system as well as the latest firmware of the drive.
 
Captain_WD.

 

Here's a screenshot of everything. I installed the WD SES Driver, Windows Update suggested me that (it was in the optional list). I will try to test it on another machine

Sorry for my bad English!
i5-4590 | Sabertooth Z97 mk2 | Intel HD 4600 | ADATA XPG V1 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 | Intel 530 120GB | Cooler Master N600 | Seasonic G-450 | Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 | Win8.1 Pro x64

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Here's a screenshot of everything. I installed the WD SES Driver, Windows Update suggested me that (it was in the optional list). I will try to test it on another machine

 

 

You shouldn't need the WD SES driver in order for the drive to be recognized and operational. Here's some more info on this: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=wkpIA1
Do test the drive on another system to see how that goes.
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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