@6:57 -- Leo, I believe that a long format (unchecking the quick format option) could be helpful. Although "chkdsk/r" locates bad sectors, will it scour the entire drive and mark bad sectors to prevent data being written to those sectors? It implies /f. So it should fix issues with the disk. But based on the speed that chkdsk/r/f completes, I do not believe that it performs as complete of a check as a long format would perform. A long format takes half of forever, because it tests the entire disk while formatting, and would seem ideal for the issue at hand. If the long format completes, then whatever space is available on the drive should be usable, as the formatting process was able to use it. If the long format does not complete, then there is likely an existing issue with the drive. Whatever the case may be... since that drive had stalling issues on multiple Windows boxes, I would not trust it for anything important. I would not trust it on the Mac, either. One other possibility could be that if the external drive derives its power from the USB cable, then if the PC's USB port is not delivering enough power, the drive could stall. But the user stated that the issue happens with multiple Windows boxes. Is he using a hub on those boxes?
Some good comments below, too. To rule out the issue with the computer hardware, try testing another external drive of a similar kind, in the same port, with a different cable, before blaming the drive itself.
One thing I have... is clicking on a drive when I haven't used it for a bit, or haven't been saving anything for a while... and since I have the drives set to spin down if not in use, it can take 30s for the drive to spin up, so it can seem the software (or explorer) is frozen for that time. But I accept it, to help the drives last longer by having lower running hours. Also... I had a drive which I did a chkdsk /r to repair the errors trip the SMART overheat flag. Once SMART is tripped, there is no way to reset it. That drive is now slated to be recycled once I can afford to replace it.
Hi Leo. Given the symptoms, my first impression is a faulty USB cable. When troubleshooting, did your friend use the same cable to connect the external drive to the Windows machine and the Mac? Or a different cable? (P.S. 1992/1993 Viewer test manager here. IYKYK. If you see DaveBa, say hello.)
The other thing it could be is a faulty USB port on the PC. If using a different USB cable doesn't work, the next thing I'd try is a different USB port on the PC.
I looked into the event viewer before, when my Win10 had problems. What I didn't understand, I asked chat gpt. I found this bot invaluable in helping me understanding computers, even fixing various issues or using unfamiliar software. Just always exercise caution and don't trust it blindly. It makes mistakes and its memory span isn't great. It doesn't retain for long what system you have and may give you wrong advice, irrelevant to you. It is more artificial than intelligent. Still very useful, nonetheless.
For a completely 'dead' drive perform a 'low level format'. Free tools to do this are available on the internet. This action will definitely delete ALL the contents of the drive. It re-writes the timing marks on one side of one of the disk platters. This is the most basic action that you can perform on a drive and takes a long time on, say, a 5GB drive the last time I used it it took about 14 hours but the result was an unuseable "dead' external HDD has been working flawlessly now for over three months under a heavy workload.
If a drive requires a "Low Level Format" for an error, the drive is likely to not function for very long after it is done. This is to initialize the disk's surface with the tracks and sectors. In the past, the companies didn't do this in the factory, and was why you needed to know how many platters, tracks, and sectors a drive had. As it defines how the magnetic information is stored on the drive, it takes a very, very long time. I would not consider that drive reliable to store any data on it. Doing a low level format as a data destruction method (after doing a secure wipe)... it works well, as it redefines where the blocks of data are, making it much harder to even attempt to read the residual magnetic data from the drive. if 5 GB took 14 hours... a 1 TB, will take 2867 hours (or almost 120 days). To me, that is not worth it. Not sure why you are using such a tiny drive!
I use a 5tb wd passport because that's the only way I can edit my entire photography collection when out of the house. People keep pushing cloud storage but it's not good enough for me editing in real time. Local storage is the only sensible option for me. Until they make cloud storage as fast as an external drive
First, I'm assuming this is a spinning drive and not an SSD. If someone came to me with this issue, I would first suggest that they try The drive on different USB ports of the main Windows machine. Then I would check to see if the drive work correctly on a different Windows computer. If it does, then it is more likely a computer not a drive issue. Also an issue like this could be the result of a bad cable or even faulty electronics in the enclosure.
Did you watch the entire piece? Leo said that the OP had tried the drive in multiple Windows computers with the same result, halting within 20 seconds but works fine on a Mac. It used to be that if you bought an external drive, you had to choose between Mac or Windows, now a days, not so much.
@@johnhpalmer6098 It's possible the same (faulty?) USB cable was used on the different PCs but a different cable on the Mac. Perhaps not, but that's my first troubleshooting thing to try.
@@ronster-380 Not likely as most external drives uses either a large B type connector, or the smaller one, not a normal A/A cable, or failing that, it uses a C to A cable. Thus, having that is not as likely. I know as I have 3 externals, one a larger 3.5" Simpletech that uses the A/B cable and a wall wart for power, the 2 WD Passports use the smaller mini B to regular A cables.
I had a Seagate external drive that failed, I could write and read small files (maybe up to 3 or 4 MB) but not larger files, with larger files Windows would stop reading or writting due to CRC errors, I was blaming the hard disc but it was the sata to usb chip of the external housing. I purchased another external housing and the drive still works 15+ years later.
This is a very timely video. Unfortunately, I'm caught up with a catch-22. I've been trying to backup to an external drive, and have been encountering this freeze problem. I want to back up before I do much, but the backup is not working! Most of my important things are on One Drive (yes, I hear the gasps, and I am gasping as well), so I'm not too anxious about the backup to external drive not working, but I'd like to flush One Drive in favor of my own backups to the external drive. I'm only 1:30 into the video, so let's see where you go from here! Fortunately the external disk is new (to me) that a friend gave me, so there's nothing important on it yet. (And I've trashed it many times trying to get this to work.) On one of the 2 drives given to me, the donor has written that it is a 3TB drive. But even after deleting all volumes, Disk Manager still shows that its capacity is one about 750 GB. The donor is a serious MAC user, and the drive has 2 Fire Wire connectors on it, but I'm only using the USB. Maybe the enclosure is optimized for MAC and refuses to work well on Windows. But the symptoms are exactly as you described. Works OK for small stuff, but when I try a backup targeted to the external drive, everything goes belly-up.
With the drive showing a markedly different size... it could be a scammed drive... and actually be a 750 GB drive which had some changes to fake being a larger drive... may want to consider opening the external shell... and see what the disk has for the label.
I ran into the same issue where my external SSD would freeze explorer.exe. Turns out it only freezes when connected with the USB C to A cable. The SSD works properly when using the C to C. Very strange. I tried the same C to A cable with a different SSD and it was fine.
actually had that issue when using external wd elements hard drive with usb 4 port hub would at times disconnect now i just use it to laptop usb and so far no issues also for hard drive issues good apps actually are crystal disk info and hard disk sentinel i use both of em crystal disk info beeing the most used it will tell me health status of drive
✅ Watch next ▶ What Do I Do About Windows File Explorer Crashing? ▶ ruclips.net/video/YQ7K3nLkQio/видео.html
@6:57 -- Leo, I believe that a long format (unchecking the quick format option) could be helpful.
Although "chkdsk/r" locates bad sectors, will it scour the entire drive and mark bad sectors to prevent data being written to those sectors?
It implies /f. So it should fix issues with the disk. But based on the speed that chkdsk/r/f completes, I do not believe that it performs as complete of a check as a long format would perform.
A long format takes half of forever, because it tests the entire disk while formatting, and would seem ideal for the issue at hand.
If the long format completes, then whatever space is available on the drive should be usable, as the formatting process was able to use it.
If the long format does not complete, then there is likely an existing issue with the drive.
Whatever the case may be... since that drive had stalling issues on multiple Windows boxes, I would not trust it for anything important. I would not trust it on the Mac, either.
One other possibility could be that if the external drive derives its power from the USB cable, then if the PC's USB port is not delivering enough power, the drive could stall. But the user stated that the issue happens with multiple Windows boxes. Is he using a hub on those boxes?
Some good comments below, too. To rule out the issue with the computer hardware, try testing another external drive of a similar kind, in the same port, with a different cable, before blaming the drive itself.
One thing I have... is clicking on a drive when I haven't used it for a bit, or haven't been saving anything for a while... and since I have the drives set to spin down if not in use, it can take 30s for the drive to spin up, so it can seem the software (or explorer) is frozen for that time. But I accept it, to help the drives last longer by having lower running hours.
Also... I had a drive which I did a chkdsk /r to repair the errors trip the SMART overheat flag. Once SMART is tripped, there is no way to reset it. That drive is now slated to be recycled once I can afford to replace it.
Hi Leo. Given the symptoms, my first impression is a faulty USB cable. When troubleshooting, did your friend use the same cable to connect the external drive to the Windows machine and the Mac? Or a different cable? (P.S. 1992/1993 Viewer test manager here. IYKYK. If you see DaveBa, say hello.)
The other thing it could be is a faulty USB port on the PC. If using a different USB cable doesn't work, the next thing I'd try is a different USB port on the PC.
I looked into the event viewer before, when my Win10 had problems. What I didn't understand, I asked chat gpt. I found this bot invaluable in helping me understanding computers, even fixing various issues or using unfamiliar software. Just always exercise caution and don't trust it blindly. It makes mistakes and its memory span isn't great. It doesn't retain for long what system you have and may give you wrong advice, irrelevant to you. It is more artificial than intelligent. Still very useful, nonetheless.
For a completely 'dead' drive perform a 'low level format'. Free tools to do this are available on the internet. This action will definitely delete ALL the contents of the drive. It re-writes the timing marks on one side of one of the disk platters. This is the most basic action that you can perform on a drive and takes a long time on, say, a 5GB drive the last time I used it it took about 14 hours but the result was an unuseable "dead' external HDD has been working flawlessly now for over three months under a heavy workload.
If a drive requires a "Low Level Format" for an error, the drive is likely to not function for very long after it is done. This is to initialize the disk's surface with the tracks and sectors. In the past, the companies didn't do this in the factory, and was why you needed to know how many platters, tracks, and sectors a drive had. As it defines how the magnetic information is stored on the drive, it takes a very, very long time. I would not consider that drive reliable to store any data on it.
Doing a low level format as a data destruction method (after doing a secure wipe)... it works well, as it redefines where the blocks of data are, making it much harder to even attempt to read the residual magnetic data from the drive.
if 5 GB took 14 hours... a 1 TB, will take 2867 hours (or almost 120 days). To me, that is not worth it. Not sure why you are using such a tiny drive!
I use a 5tb wd passport because that's the only way I can edit my entire photography collection when out of the house. People keep pushing cloud storage but it's not good enough for me editing in real time. Local storage is the only sensible option for me. Until they make cloud storage as fast as an external drive
@@Vicvines I use an external HDD plus both OneDrive and Google Drive.
First, I'm assuming this is a spinning drive and not an SSD.
If someone came to me with this issue, I would first suggest that they try The drive on different USB ports of the main Windows machine. Then I would check to see if the drive work correctly on a different Windows computer. If it does, then it is more likely a computer not a drive issue.
Also an issue like this could be the result of a bad cable or even faulty electronics in the enclosure.
Did you watch the entire piece? Leo said that the OP had tried the drive in multiple Windows computers with the same result, halting within 20 seconds but works fine on a Mac. It used to be that if you bought an external drive, you had to choose between Mac or Windows, now a days, not so much.
@@johnhpalmer6098 It's possible the same (faulty?) USB cable was used on the different PCs but a different cable on the Mac. Perhaps not, but that's my first troubleshooting thing to try.
@@ronster-380 Not likely as most external drives uses either a large B type connector, or the smaller one, not a normal A/A cable, or failing that, it uses a C to A cable.
Thus, having that is not as likely. I know as I have 3 externals, one a larger 3.5" Simpletech that uses the A/B cable and a wall wart for power, the 2 WD Passports use the smaller mini B to regular A cables.
I had a Seagate external drive that failed, I could write and read small files (maybe up to 3 or 4 MB) but not larger files, with larger files Windows would stop reading or writting due to CRC errors, I was blaming the hard disc but it was the sata to usb chip of the external housing. I purchased another external housing and the drive still works 15+ years later.
This is a very timely video. Unfortunately, I'm caught up with a catch-22. I've been trying to backup to an external drive, and have been encountering this freeze problem. I want to back up before I do much, but the backup is not working! Most of my important things are on One Drive (yes, I hear the gasps, and I am gasping as well), so I'm not too anxious about the backup to external drive not working, but I'd like to flush One Drive in favor of my own backups to the external drive. I'm only 1:30 into the video, so let's see where you go from here! Fortunately the external disk is new (to me) that a friend gave me, so there's nothing important on it yet. (And I've trashed it many times trying to get this to work.)
On one of the 2 drives given to me, the donor has written that it is a 3TB drive. But even after deleting all volumes, Disk Manager still shows that its capacity is one about 750 GB. The donor is a serious MAC user, and the drive has 2 Fire Wire connectors on it, but I'm only using the USB. Maybe the enclosure is optimized for MAC and refuses to work well on Windows. But the symptoms are exactly as you described. Works OK for small stuff, but when I try a backup targeted to the external drive, everything goes belly-up.
With the drive showing a markedly different size... it could be a scammed drive... and actually be a 750 GB drive which had some changes to fake being a larger drive... may want to consider opening the external shell... and see what the disk has for the label.
Hi Leo, why does my HD temperature increase too much when scanning with Malwarebytes but not with any other antivirus software?
If it works on the MAC, I would use the MAC disk software to get the disk checked and repaired.
I ran into the same issue where my external SSD would freeze explorer.exe. Turns out it only freezes when connected with the USB C to A cable. The SSD works properly when using the C to C. Very strange. I tried the same C to A cable with a different SSD and it was fine.
actually had that issue when using external wd elements hard drive with usb 4 port hub would at times disconnect now i just use it to laptop usb and so far no issues also for hard drive issues good apps actually are crystal disk info and hard disk sentinel i use both of em crystal disk info beeing the most used it will tell me health status of drive
Reinitialize the disk in MBR if Windows is old.
I always run this hard disk monitoring software. It constantly monitors hard disks before they die