Question USB Drives Troubles

[Greatwhitewing]

Win 10. Just recently I have had a rash of USB HDD troubles. The most troubling is a 4TB WD passport. I get the hardware added sound but drive never shows. If I use paragon partition program and change drive letter, and apply, I can see it but when re-insert the cable it's gone again. I have other USB HDD's. Two SSD's in cases, one works pretty well, the other similar to the passport. I had another 2TB WD passport just stop working, nothing at all. I have a 2TB 2.5 spinning HDD in a case that I had issues but has been one of the more usuable drives
Probably unrelated but I suddenly cannot connect to shared folders on other computers.
Everything worked very well weeks ago. All of sudden almost everything has trouble.
I tried the drives on 3 separate computers one an older win 7 with similar results
How can 5 USB HDD's all of a sudden all of them start acting up, some worse than others but troubles with all?

Would win 11 help or hurt?

Thanks

 

[Paperdoc]

We need details of how those many drives are being connected. I suspect a power limit issue.

Start with: a standard USB2 port can supply power at 5 VDC up to 0.5 A. For USB3, the limit is raised to 0.9 A. External drives marketed for use on USB2 ports came in two forms. NEITHER of them could work when plugged into ONE USB2 port. One type came with its own "Power Brick" that you had to connect, and that provided all the power it needed - the USB2 cable connection only did the data transfers. The other type came with an odd cable with TWO USB2 connects on one end. You had to plug BOTH of those into SEPARATE ports to get enough power to run the drive unit. NOTE that, in both types, the internals of the unit were particularly designed for minimum power use to be able to function on no more than 1.0 A. You could NOT use any standard desktop drive unit in a case with that odd double-ended cable because they need more than 1 A.

Now in the USB3 era, "laptop drives" are made with similar low-power units inside but come only with a regular USB3 cable, because the internals CAN work on 0.9 A or slightly less. MANY do not even have a jack on them for adding an external power brick, although some do. Most of them also are sold with the comforting phrase "USB2 Compatible", BUT they can NOT work if they are plugged into just a USB2 port with its lower power limit. If you try, typically it will light up and look OK, and even can be recognized by your system, UNTIL you actually try to USE it - then the electrical load of the motor to spin the disks it too much and they fail. So IF you are trying to use a newer USB3-design "laptop drive" on a USB2 port, it will NOT work unless you can supply power separate from the USB2 port.

Then comes a related issue. What if you have more than one such drive? Well, if you do and you plug each into its own USB3 port, it should work as far a power needs go. BUT if you are using two or more on a single port via a USB HUB which has NO power brick of its own, you are trying to power TWO (or more) laptop drives from ONE port's power source, and it can't work again. To do that you MUST have a HUB that comes with its own power brick AND you must connect that. Moreover, that power supply module MUST be able to provide all the power for ALL of the drive units you have connected to the Hub. For example, if you connect four laptop drives to one Hub and port, assume each drive unit will need 5 VDC at 0.9 A each, or 3.6 A. Now, oddly, the power bricks supplied with powered USB3 hubs often supply the Hub with 12 VDC, and the hub converts. So to quantify power we must resort to WATTS, not Amps. 5 VDC at 3.6 A amounts to 18 Watts. At 12 VDC that would amount to about 1.5 A or a bit more. So if that is what you are trying to do, look closely at the specs for the power brick that comes with the powered USB3 Hub, for its WATTS rating. It must be a bit MORE than 4.5 W PER DRIVE that you are connecting to that Hub.

 

[Greatwhitewing]

I have no ability or desire to play with voltages and currents. I swapped computers and cables as much as I have access to.
I will stick to the 4TB Western Digital drive for now to avoid confusion. I use supplied cable (and tried other cables) and having used the drive for about a year on my computer (plugging in periodically doing backups and off computer lightroom files) and getting same results on 3 different computers. All the data on the drive was put on with my HP laptop. If I change the drive letter using Paragon Partition Manager 15 and apply changes the drive is visible and works fine until I unplug and plug it back in again.
This problem is across multiple USB drives on multiple computers ALL very recently. No issues prior to this recent rash
Right now only one SSD in a cheap case from amazon works somewhat reliably, not perfect