Why Does My WD External Hard Drive Freeze My Computer When I Try to Access a File on It?? How Can I Fix It? ?
OK, so heres the problem =( I have a 180 gig Western Digital external hard drive. Well, it has worked fine, up until a few weeks ago. First, I couldn’t get my PC to recognize it, but I have fixed that problem ( YAY!!). NOW……..any time I try to access any of my files, it freezes up on me . I mean freezes the whole damn computer, and I need to restart it to get it going again………OR I have to unplug the hard drive and then plug it back in ( which I dont want to keep doing, for fear it will totally F@#% up the drive). I try to check it for errors, but it takes FOREVER and never seems to finish =(
So……..my friends out there in cyber world……….how can I fix it??? I have 6 years worth of stuff saved that I cant get to =(
Thanks in advance for your help =)
Kari
if it is bad sectors. Try downloading the Ubuntu live CD (runs off of CD).Transfer all you files while in this new temporary operating system.
(make sure you unmount the drive in windows first)
If you use Ubuntu you’ll need this link eventually http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=217009
Based on your description, it would appear to me that 1 of 2 things has happened.
A) The controller card in the external enclosure is failing and there is not a way you can repair that. The best option here would be to disassemble the external drive and remove the actual physical hard drive and put it in another external enclosure or inside a desktop pc.
B) There are bad sectors/clusters on the hard drive itself. In this case, retrieving the data is not going to be possible with conventional means and you will need to send it to a data recovery place such as Drive Savers and spend quite a bit of money to get your data back.