Question External HDD suddenly won't work on one USB 3 port

[Bud-S]

I have a 2TB Western Digital green hard drive in an iDsonix external hard drive dock.

My PC has one USB 3.1 port on the front of the case, and I have always used this port to connect this hard drive... but suddenly it does not work properly anymore. When I plug it in, it takes forever to finally show up in My Computer (over 15 minutes), and when it does, it's listed as having an "Unspecified" file system, the volume label is blank, and transfer speeds are less than 1MB.

It works perfectly fine when plugging it in to any other USB port on my computer (2.0 ports on the front, and 3.1 & 3.2 ports on the back). It's just this one USB 3.1 port on the front that stopped working correctly for this drive. When I swap the Western Digital drive for a Samsung drive I have, it works properly. All of my USB flash drives (they're all USB 2.0) work perfectly fine when plugged into this one port, also.

I tried unplugging & re-plugging the cable for this USB port on my motherboard, but it made no difference.

So what would cause this one drive to suddenly not work properly on this one USB 3.1 port?

Windows 10 Pro 22H2
MSI X570-A Pro

 

[Ralston18]

The original USB connection cable may be faulty or failing in some manner.

Does not take much for a cable to fail and stop working in one port but still work in other ports.

All the more so for cables used to connect and disconnect external devices. Much more stress involved than if simply plugged in and left in place.

Do you have another known working USB cable that can be used to connect the PC's USB 3.1 port and the host dock for the 2TB WD green HDD?

 

[NedSmelly]

Try a different cable to begin with. But regardless, I’d swap out the HD to another dock/enclosure.

If it’s one of those cheap generic docks/enclosures… they use really cheap controller circuits and chipsets that can develop dry solder and/or other hardware issues. I had an Orico that would do that and corrupt the file system every couple of months.

There could also be some corrosion or physical wear on the front USB port. Front ports tend to experience more wear due to their location, and case ports are generally poorer build quality than motherboard ports.

 

[Bud-S]

Thanks for the replies.

This is the dock I'm using:
https://www.amazon.com/iDsonix-Drive-Docking-Station-Cable/dp/B00FDLCTQO

I don't have another cable to try because the end that plugs into the dock is an odd version of USB type B (odd to me anyway). It has an extra part on top with extra pins... I have several type A to type B cables, but none with that extra bit. You can see what I mean if you look at the pictures in the link above.

The odd thing is, it works fine when I swap out the HDD for another one. Could it still be an issue with the cable considering this?