usb fried? or just bad

[mechnut450]

I not been on in a long time lol.

ok I had a usb drive that was used only to keep keys on like anydvd and some text file of other keys. I recently had to reload my pc after a hardrive went south ( must of been banged around while I moved enough to damage it beyond use) So I get everything up and running with a spare 1tb drive and pop in my usb with the files on it and sob the pc locks up hard no mouse no nothing I have to do a reset . I tried again same issues I tried other usb drive and everything fine. I even did some file off the other drive, Figure I try again with a different port and locks up again. so here I am hoping my uncle still uses his old email to have the key sent to him again and I putting it on 2 usb and a external drive. tyhis round and will also leave the email locked on my server later on.
Has anyone else have usb drive just up an fail between uses ( will admit it an old 2 gb drive that has not been used much in the last 3 year or so. ) I got a 513 drive that runs strong that houses my resume and a couple pictures I don't want to lose lol but they going on a cd and another drive as well to be safe.

 

[Hammerhead]

Has anyone else have usb drive just up an fail between uses

Yes. I rescued an external USB drive for a photographer who used one to store his legacy images. Turns out the drive was fine, it was the controller card that converted SATA to USB that failed. There was some file corruption, but fortunately he had it formatted NTFS, so the damage was isolated.

If you can extract the drive from its enclosure and try it in another PC without the electronics inbetween, you might be in luck. I won't rule out that the drive is FUBAR but you'll at least have isolated the issue.

Good luck!

 

[Crower]

I bought a G-Force 3 drive from Fantom which was bad out of the box. It wouldn't connect to my laptop and gave a number of different behaviors, none of which worked. After sending it in to Fantom and them pronouncing it "not bad", I took the hard drive out of the case and using a USB adapter connected it to the laptop, and it worked fine. I eventually installed it in a cheap Sentey case and it works like it should have originally. The point is, like Hammerhead stated, the drive itself my be ok and the interface bad.

One of the most useful gadgets I have is my "Cables Unlimited" USB adapter which will take either a serial or parallel drive (large or small) and connect it to a USB port, making that drive available to the connected computer or device. I've used it with FAT and NTFS drive formats and even to converted my BD player to a media player using its USB port (which allowed the BD player to access the media files on the drive). It was USB 2 but the other day I used it to transfer from a 2.5" HD and I swear it ran at USB 3 speed. That adapter was purchased several years back but I'm sure there are equivalents available on the web (see link below). I believe I paid about $15US for it and it's paid back every cent. Not as neat as an enclosed adapter, but it works on most any drive (the linked one below mentions working with an optical drive).

http://www.amazon.com/SANOXY®-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B001OORMVQ/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1441569129&sr=1-3&keywords=usb+to+sata+adapter+cable