External hard drive freezing

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COPE2

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Sep 4, 2009
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I have an external hard drive that keeps freezing in Windows, but when I use it with Linux, it works fine. Why do you think that is?
 
freezing? the HD? or the windows explorer?
have you tried running scandisk on it?
 
Windows explorer freezes. I know it's a Windows problem because it works perfect on Linux. I havent run scan disk because it's a new drive, and I just formated it. I did a search about it on google but it was mostly useless responses like "install new drivers", "maybe you have a virus", etc.
 
Run scandisk with a bad block check. It's very possible that Windows is hitting bad sectors while Linux is not.
 
I spoke too soon. Now I am running into problems in Linux as well. Can you please advise me how to run scan disk? I have tried to right click on the drive in Windows and go to property and tried the scan disk that way, but is not working. Is it possible to run scan disk in Ubuntu?
 
It's confirmed. I just looked in Linux and it's telling me I have too many bad sectors. How can I fix this? This might have something to do with the fact that I did not safely remove the usb drive.
 
COPE2 said:
It's confirmed. I just looked in Linux and it's telling me I have too many bad sectors. How can I fix this? This might have something to do with the fact that I did not safely remove the usb drive.
Click to expand...

If it has bad sectors and the disk is new, RMA is the solution ;)
 
Are you saying the bad sectors are irreparable? Also, one thing that concerns me is that I have over 500gb of data on the drive, and nowhere to back it up.
 
COPE2 said:
Are you saying the bad sectors are irreparable? Also, one thing that concerns me is that I have over 500gb of data on the drive, and nowhere to back it up.
Click to expand...

Buy another drive and copy the data off while you can. Or find a place. There's really not many other options I'd want to go with.

Sometimes doing a SMART long test will cause the drive to reallocate failed blocks. Or some tools can destructively write to the bad blocks, which should cause the drive to reallocate them.
 
COPE2 said:
Are you saying the bad sectors are irreparable? Also, one thing that concerns me is that I have over 500gb of data on the drive, and nowhere to back it up.
Click to expand...

funny stuff, a friend of mine just gave me his external drive,
it has the same problem as yours, freezing!!
i'll try to hook it up to my PC and run some HD programs
 
I think it has to do with me turning off my computer without safely removing the hardware. At the same time, it isn't exactly easy to safely remove the hardware because windows frequently does not allow it. It seems easier to remove it on Linux.
 
COPE2 said:
I think it has to do with me turning off my computer without safely removing the hardware. At the same time, it isn't exactly easy to safely remove the hardware because windows frequently does not allow it. It seems easier to remove it on Linux.
Click to expand...

That shouldn't cause this problem. It may corrupt the filesystem but it won't cause bad sectors. If you've done a scandisk and the problems persist, it's a hardware issue.
 
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