Question External drive freezing issues

[FrenchyfromPA]

Hi,

Yesterday evening I was playing a MKV movie file from my external drive on my PS4. The first few minutes I noticed a few problems and there were some jumpy/shaky playback then a few minutes later the file froze and I wasn't able to do anything even closing it. Then the file closed and I got the message " A problem occured in the system software the last time the PS4 was used (CE-36329-3)" then the PS4 shut down by itself and restarted. I'm not sure if the problem is coming from the external drive or from the PS4... After running a few tests it seems the problem comes from the portable drive not from the PS4, I tried to play several movie files from that drive on my laptop and I have the same problem. I ran "sfc /scannow" on that drive and didn't find any issue and its health status in CrystalDiskInfo is "Good".... So I don't know what to do...

Thanks for your help,

Serge

 

[rgd1101]

"sfc /scannow"

that a system scan. not hdd scan

anyway. sound like the hdd is failing. backup your data. then do a hdd surface scan

 

[FrenchyfromPA]

that a system scan. not hdd scan

anyway. sound like the hdd is failing. backup your data. then do a hdd surface scan

Thanks for your reply and sorry for the delay to write back but I've been quite busy with other things these last few days. Actually I did try to transfer as many files as I could but suddenly it froze and I heard a few clicks before it disconnected. I tried to plug it back in I got the message "USB not recognized, malfunction....", the light is still on and I can feel the disk spinning inside and when I checked "Device Manager - Universal Serial Bus Controllers" I saw "Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed) and in Properties "General" I see this message : Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43). A request for the USB device descriptor failed. And in Events I can read this other message : Outranked Drivers: usb.inf:USB\DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR_FAILURE:00FF2000
Device Updated: false
Parent Device: USB\ROOT_HUB30\5&8beff0b&0&0

Well, it seems that there is some problem with the mechanism in that external drive, probably the head or the actuator arm something like that. I'm not really sure and very familiar with that because I've never had any mechanical problems with my other external drives before but only problems with bad sectors. Before my laptop stopped recognizing that drive I heard a clicking a few times then it disconnected the drive. I saw on various videos from YouTube (like the one I pasted underneath) that it's possible to fix some of those mechanical problems but it's very risky to expose the drive to dust and that could wipe out all the data... :
How to recover data from a hard drive (stuck heads: buzzing, clicking, etc) - YouTube

I also read that it can cost a lot of money to have it repaired or to have the data transferred to another drive especially this one is a 3TB drive and it was full at 99%... So I don't know what I should do, Use some data recovery services to have it repaired or just have them transferred all my data on another of my external drive? Which one would be the cheapest?....

 

[rgd1101]

Yes it going to cost alot for data recovery.
do not use them if the data is not important. and they might not be about to recover all data. That why backup is important
when they recover data, it going to a new disk. there is no repair and keep using that 3tb.

 

[FrenchyfromPA]

Yes it going to cost alot for data recovery.
do not use them if the data is not important. and they might not be about to recover all data. That why backup is important
when they recover data, it going to a new disk. there is no repair and keep using that 3tb.

Well, I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet but I checked online and it seems to be quite expensive to have it done by some data recovery specialist. What about the video from YouTube I posted with my previous message, reading the reviews it seems that it worked for many people but if I have the same problem with the heads stuck on the platters!?...

 

[rgd1101]

sure if you don't need the data( as in not important) then try it.
warning when you mess it up, very good chance, no data can be recovery.

 

[FrenchyfromPA]

sure if you don't need the data( as in not important) then try it.
warning when you mess it up, very good chance, no data can be recovery.

I got this reply today from a local computer repair shop :

We do fix those problems. We do in house data recovery other than recoveries that need a clean room which we send out to a company we have been using for 20 years.
Clean room recoveries can be $1500+, if we can do in house they range from $249-$599

I'll probably get an appointment with them and bring the hard drive over for a diagnostic. Of course there's some data I want to recover on it but I wouldn't want to pay more than $500.