When I connect an external hard drive, the PC crashes | Solutions

When an external hard drive is connected to a computer, the computer may crash . Do you know how to solve the problem? Now you can learn how to deal with this scenario in the future by following the steps in this article.

Index of contents

• Possible causes
• Problem solution
  • Check with anti malware software
  • We check from console or CMD
  • Try Windows Powershell
  • Last alternative… format your external hard drive
• Rabbits to avoid this type of problem

Possible causes

If your PC hangs when you connect the external hard drive , this can be caused by two main problems:

• Problems with the external hard drive itself: If the external hard drive crashes the computer, whatever it is, when you plug it in, you should check if the hard drive itself is faulty. If you find yourself in this situation, you should consider formatting the drive to see if that works, though keep in mind that you will lose your data. However, by doing a quick format, with some forensic tools you can recover them if they have not been overwritten. You can also open your external hard drive to see if there’s anything wrong with the naked eye, though this is more risky and could render the drive unusable if you don’t quite know what you’re doing. You can also test the drive on another computer, to see if it locks it too. In case it does not block it, it may be a problem with your equipment, and I recommend you read the next point.
• Problems with your computer: If the external hard drive is connected to another computer and it does not crash, then you have to consider that the problem is with your computer. This can be caused by various issues, from the operating system itself, to malware that is blocking the use of external storage drives. For this reason, you have to check beforehand if it is one or the other problem to try to solve it. It could also be a problem with the interface driver itself, although this is more unusual, but it should not be ruled out.

Problem solution

Finally, in order to solve the two previous problems, the steps to follow are:

Check with anti malware software

Pass a good antivirus or antimalware to your computer. You can use any of the antivirus that you have installed and complement it with the Malwarebytes tool . In this way, you will be able to rule out or confirm that it could have been some malicious code that is causing this problem on your computer.

We check from console or CMD

You should also follow these steps if the previous solution did not work:

1. Reboot in order to unlock the locked system, but do not remove the external hard drive, leave it connected to the port. Of course, do not open it again so that it does not block again.
2. See Start your Windows.
3. Then on This team.
4. Now right click on your external hard drive.
5. Click on Properties in the menu that appears.
6. Then in Tools.
7. Then you need to click Check Now.
8. Wait for it to scan for physical issues like bad or corrupt sectors, etc.
9. If it locates them, there you have your problem. Your external hard drive is failing.

Try Windows Powershell

Another possible solution if the above has not worked is to follow other steps using tools for the drive such as:

1. Press the Windows + X keys.
2. Open CMD.exe as administrator.
3. In the terminal window that appears you must go to the drive letter that corresponds to your external hard drive, for example, if it is drive E, simply type E:and press ENTER. *(It also works if you indicate the drive after the command, for example chkdsk /f E: and you don’t have to change the drive)
4. Now you will see that the prompt has changed and is E:\>. Now it’s time to run the command to check the external drive for errors. To do this, you just have to type the command chkdsk /f and press ENTER. What this will do is search for and repair the errors.
5. Once the above is finished, the next command to type is chkdsk /rand press ENTER, so you can locate the problem sectors and try to recover the information that is readable.
6. Once the two commands are completed, everything is ready. Check if the problem is fixed or if not, go to the next point.

Last alternative… format your external hard drive

If none of the above has worked, another possible solution is to format the hard drive , but you will lose the data. To do this, you can follow the steps below:

1. See Start in your Windows.
2. Then go into This Team.
3. Now right-click on the drive corresponding to the external hard drive.
4. Click Format in the menu that appears.
5. In unit label you can put a name if you want, in file system you should respect the one you already use. If it’s a large storage drive, it most likely has NTFS, if it’s small, it may have FAT32. Leave the size as default and select the option Give quick format.
6. Now press OK.
7. Wait for the formatting process to complete and you’re done.

In this case, you could try to recover the data deleted by formatting if you have used quick format with some forensic tool such as Test Disk and PhotoRec. If they haven’t been overwritten, you’ll more than likely get them all back. For that reason, after the quick format, you should not store anything on your external drive.

Rabbits to avoid this type of problem

Some tips to prevent the drive from failing are:

• Never unplug the drive without using the safe unplug option. The operating system does not always write the data right away, even though the process indicator bar indicates otherwise. For that reason, unplugging is likely to corrupt data or damage the drive.
• Treat the external storage unit properly, without hitting it, always using a protective cover, etc. In this way, you will also avoid possible vibrations or shocks that may be causing physical deterioration of the unit, especially if it is an HDD ( SSDs resist something more).
• Keep your operating system, firmware, and software up-to-date to avoid potential issues and vulnerabilities that could cause security gaps. And you should always use good antivirus software to stop problems caused by malware.
• Always buy units that are of good brand and reliable. These tend to fail less than average, and therefore will not be as prone to these problems. For example, Toshiba, Western Digital, Samsung, are good examples of rugged drives.