ESATA Drive crashing computer

October 11, 2007 4:53 PM

E-SATA Hard drive freezing my computer.

I've got a couple of external hard drives hooked up to my laptop via an Expresscard E-SATA adapter. They were both working great up until recently. I went to plug in the adapter one day and my computer froze. I unplug it, and it unfreezes immediately. It's only doing this when the one drive is attached. Fortunately, most of the important data is mirrored onto the second one. The USB 2.0 connection is not working either

I've tried everything I could think of, from freezing it in a ziploc bag to giving it a bump on the desk to try to free up stuck heads or something... I'm kind of at a loss now...

Details on the equipment involved

Rosewill Expresscard to E-SATA adapter
Beyond Micro 500GB E-SATA & USB 2.0 Hard drive
Windows Vista Home Premium

posted by bigtalldave101 to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

This happened to me once, with an internal hard drive (it was an IDE though). Turned out it was a bum drive. I exchanged it for a new one and it was fine.
posted by Verdandi at 5:39 PM on October 11, 2007

Use a Linux live cd, like SLAX or Damn Small Linux. These are small linux environments that boot from a CD, without touching your hard drive. Try plugging in the hard drive then, and see if it works. That way, you'll know if it's a software or a hardware issue. If it doesn't work, go to a terminal window and type "dmesg". That will show you the kernel errors (if any) caused by the drive. It'll give you a better idea of what's wrong.
posted by limon at 5:52 PM on October 11, 2007

I've had a (Windows) PC stall when plugging in a USB device because the device wasn't getting enough power. Try plugging them in through an externally-powered hub.
posted by krisjohn at 6:13 PM on October 11, 2007