IOMega 1 TB External Hard Drive Keeps Turning Off During File Transfer

[doodooface]

The external hard drive uses a USB and came with its own power adapter in which I have plugged in. Whenever a transfer is going on with a file larger than 1 GB, the transfer rate slowly decreases and the drive turns itself off and on. I've tried plugging it in a different outlet and a different port on the desktop but the same results take place. What is wrong with it?

 

[kenrivers]

Does this happen if the drive is connected to another computer? Try it if you haven't to find out whether it is drive or computer related. Have you tried a different USB cable? I strongly suggest you back up any data stored on this drive as it is possible the drive is failing. I take it that this is a recent problem and the drive performed as expected before this started happening.

 

[doodooface]

Does this happen if the drive is connected to another computer? Try it if you haven't to find out whether it is drive or computer related. Have you tried a different USB cable? I strongly suggest you back up any data stored on this drive as it is possible the drive is failing. I take it that this is a recent problem and the drive performed as expected before this started happening.

I just purchased this external harddrive off of ebay yesterday and it came with its original packaging and all its contents. I tried connecting the USB to a laptop and transferring a large file and the transfer speed is significantly slower and also decreases over time. There's no data on the drive so there's nothing to lose.

 

[kenrivers]

I did a Google search and found many others have the same question but haven't found much in the way of a solution, yet. A couple of things I read include it could be powering down and to change this you need to check power management for the USB ports (Control Panel->expand the Universal Serial Bus tree->right click USB Root Hub->Properties->Power Management, uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power), another was a problem with the controller board inside the external case, and the last one was the drive could be loose inside the case.

 

[doodooface]

I recently dissected and converted the external to an internal hard-drive and hooked it up to a sata cable, but the transfer speeds are even slower now. Is there a need for defragmentation for either drives?

 

[kenrivers]

I recently dissected and converted the external to an internal hard-drive and hooked it up to a sata cable, but the transfer speeds are even slower now. Is there a need for defragmentation for either drives?

What type of SATA ports do you have on your motherboard (SATA 1, 2 or 3)? If the drive is a SATA 2 drive and is connected to a SATA 1 port you will get slower transfer speeds. You could try defragmenting the drives and see if that helps. You could something like Defraggler (free download from http://www.piriform.com/defraggler) and see how much fragmentation is on each drive.

 

[doodooface]

I believe the incorrect SATA plug might be the case here. The drive itself wouldn't defrag and would always stay at 0% and after running a crystaldisk check its health status came up as bad, so I just decided to send it back and purchase an actual internal harddrive instead. Thank you very much for all your help.

 

[nidany]

The ultimate solution is called "The Chinese Connection"! 🙂
I'm using 4 laptops - 2 Dells, 1 Asus & 1 Lenovo. All are i7 varieties and 16 Gb ram. All of them are connected via USB3 ports to external HDD's by WD & Seagate. Capacity 3-4 Tb. All are externally powered.
ALL of them kept turning on & off on idle and on file transfer. I've searched everywhere and even tried Microsoft's silly hotfix ( http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows 7/Windows Server2008 R2 SP1/sp2/Fix373164/7600/free/435480_intl_x64_zip.exe).
Everything failed!
2 weeks ago I got a private message from a friend who is a senior engineer in WD.
He suggested to buy from Aliexpress (or any other Chinese junk retailer) an external 7 port USB3 hub WITH AN EXTERNAL POWER SUPPLY CABLE and connect every external HDD to it.
Lo & behold! everything works perfectly now. On all laptops - all HDD's.
Cost is 9.5 -14 $ depends on the number of ports ( http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-usb-hub.html?site=glo&SearchText=usb+hub&CatId=708032&initiative_id=AS_20140929152554&shipCountry=il&pvId=493-4&isrefine=y)

Please share this with other forum users.

 

[Snake Guy]

Wow! after lots of searching and tinkering, this worked for me! wow! I only have a USB 2 powered hub, but it's not disconnecting anymore!