this might be helpful for anyone having similar problems:
I am using two toshiba external HD drives for data and backup (yes, i know, i should have at least a third one ... ).
after around 8 years of frequent use both drives started clicking, stopping and restarting from time to time.
also the drives were sometimes "lost" in the OS.
this got worse in the last months.
i first thought the gold contact surfaces of the connector must be damaged and tried all sorts of testing, cleaning, bending of contact springs.
it did not help at all.
what immediately did help however was to open the drive enclosure and reflow the connector solder joints that apparently did not whitstand the force induced by cable and plug!
opening the enclosure needed the use of a sharp knife and a bit of force and I damaged some of the plastic hooks. but anyhow, the drive works smoothly again and it was definitely worth it!
I am using two toshiba external HD drives for data and backup (yes, i know, i should have at least a third one ... ).
after around 8 years of frequent use both drives started clicking, stopping and restarting from time to time.
also the drives were sometimes "lost" in the OS.
this got worse in the last months.
i first thought the gold contact surfaces of the connector must be damaged and tried all sorts of testing, cleaning, bending of contact springs.
it did not help at all.
what immediately did help however was to open the drive enclosure and reflow the connector solder joints that apparently did not whitstand the force induced by cable and plug!
opening the enclosure needed the use of a sharp knife and a bit of force and I damaged some of the plastic hooks. but anyhow, the drive works smoothly again and it was definitely worth it!
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My knee-jerk reaction is: 8 years is a long time for a mechanical drive. While today may only be USB solder, we all know of rotating drives that dropped their heads and plowed all the data into dust. (Or stopped rotating, or stopped seeking...)
New rotary drive is your best short-term "fix". But 'thumb drives' are WAY down in price.
Brand-name (SanDisk) 512GB for $42. (Many no-name are not the capacity they claim.) https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-512GB-Ultra-Flair-Flash/dp/B083ZRDXSQ
External USB SSD, Samsung 1TB $100 https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Portable-SSD-1TB-MU-PC1T0T/dp/B0874XN4D8
Yes, a WD My Passport rotating drive is 4GB for (now) the same $95. Was $110 back 5 years ago and I've only managed to put 1.3GB on it; and IMHO it is nearing end of life. (OTOH it does seem to stop spinning between uses.)
Well.. My brother's two WD external HD's died after ~two years and they weren't dropped or the like. It's not the connectors, but probably a bad head or PCB.
Funny is they don't feature an internal SATA connector and even if I managed to access to the SATA lines before the USB chip, the data is encrypted by the USB chip... One of them is sitting recovering data at 100KB/s for days...The other is dead and shuts off itself after a few retries.
Funny is they don't feature an internal SATA connector and even if I managed to access to the SATA lines before the USB chip, the data is encrypted by the USB chip... One of them is sitting recovering data at 100KB/s for days...The other is dead and shuts off itself after a few retries.
that's true, in fact I am perfectly aware that I should switch over to new bigger drives.
I have an old DELL laptop, bought in 2009 that still has a firewire connector which i use for measuring with an external focusrite-interface. i once tripped over the connected cable and since then the connection sometimes is faulty. I will try to reflow the solder connections - i suspect there is a similar issue here.
TByte? it's easy to get mixed up.
I remember my father having a computer with a thrilling 20 MByte HDD some time ago.
some years later i had my own 2,1 GByte drive.
and the external drives mentioned above are 1 TByte.