External busted?

[Vax]

So, I was editing and then everything froze, so i rebooted my computer, and unplugged my external. Then when my computer starts up again I plug in the external and everything goes frozen. Unplug it, and my computer works fine. What does this mean and how do I fix it?

[Vax]

Also, occasionally it won't freeze but when I got to "My Computer" folder, it doesn't say anywhere the name of the external.

[CodeZTM]

I had a similar problem.

Try plugging it into another computer and see if it does the same thing.

If so, you've got a problem.

If not, then put everything external into the computer it does work on. Then format it, re put everything back onto the external and plug it back in. It should work then.

[Vax]

Thank You very much Code. It's working well on my laptop so I guess i'll just have to do what you advised

[Qyot27]

You could run Checkdisk, as maybe something about Windows messed up when you had to hard reboot - it may not be the drive, which would explain why it works ok on the laptop.

Sometimes other weird things can happen. The external drive might need to warm up first. I have one like this - if the drive is cold and I turn it on, everything on my desktop slows to a crawl - music, mouse movements, everything...but let it run for a while and the desktop will snap back, although the drive won't be recognized. So at that point I turn the drive off and turn it on again, it mounts fine and is perfectly usable. Alternately, to avoid the whole slowdown problem, I just take the USB cable out from the drive itself rather than the USB port on my computer, turn the drive on, and once it's warmed up enough I turn it off, plug the cable back in, and turn it back on.