External 3.5 inch HDD constantly powers off and on.

[Alex Skretas]

I have an external HDD enclosure for my 3.5 inch 1TB Seagate Barracuda drive. Purchased it a week ago. Yesterday the drive was working perfectly fine. Now the drive will start spinning and stop. It is constantly restarting. It sounds like it is powering on and off .The files from the disk are accessible for some seconds until Windows Explorer stops responding. I am in a Windows 7 laptop. What is the cause of this ? Should I buy another HDD Enclosure ?

 

[Human Being]

Have you tried plugging you HDD in another USB port?Are you sure that you HDD has never fell by accident or something.Also try your HDD to plug in someone else computer.If it works then you HDD is fine.Inform us so may advance so resolve the issue.

 

[Alex Skretas]

I don't have a computer where I can mount the hard drive with SATA right now. I tried switching ports but even if I don't plug the USB from the External HDD , the hard drive will still start spinning then spin for a little bit and then stop spinning like for example when you shutdown a PC. My laptop recognizes the hard drive. But because it is powering on and off all the time , I can view/copy the files/folders for a brief second until it freezes then I wait until the drive powers on again and then... (this repeats itself). It never fell but it *might* got damaged(unlikely though) during transportation. From what I've read is this happening because of the power source ?

 

[jsmithepa]

Is Windows' Power Option configured the drive to go SLEEP?

Did the drive come with an Acoustic Configuration Manager?

 

[Human Being]

Yeah sure check via Windows Power Options if the drive is set to Sleep mode.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Alex Skretas,

My guess would be that there is something wrong with the external enclosure or the cables.

As you can't connect the HDD internally via SATA right now(which is the best thing you can try), I would suggest you to try using another power cable. In case the HDD disconnects while being accessed, I would say that this shouldn't be power saving options related.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[Alex Skretas]

Thank you very much everyone I solved it by buying today another HDD Enclosure and it works! Everything is good no problems, seems like old enclosure got damaged or something. Really appreciate the help here !