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Not enough disk space? Need a backup solution? External drives provide you with extra storage in your office or on the go. Learn how to repair them here.

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Is this hard drive dead?

I found an external storage drive (technically a hard drive inside some plastic) made by Toshiba in my parent’s basement today. They weren’t using it anymore so I decided I would use it for my MBP.

When I went to erase it so I could use it again (the storage was maxed) the process of erasing the hard drive inside the enclosure took FOREVER (appx. 4-5 hours) before it finally threw an error in disk utility. I tried erasing the hard drive again but I had the same scenario.

Is it time to toss this drive or could I try anything else to revive it?

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Hard drives are not worth repairing and are physically impossible to repair anyway, don’t bother.

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@tomchai Ah yes, I have seen your posts on other HDD related questions and I was assuming someone was going to say something along those lines. Thanks for stopping by! Have a good rest of your day. :-)

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I've had issues with USB controllers in external hard drive bays causing weird issues like that. If you open it, pull the HDD and connect it directly to your motherboard through SATA, you can determine whether it’s a bad drive or a USB controller issue.

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@alecm Thank you for suggesting that! However, I have already done that. No dice, it will not reformat itself or erase either. It is a bummer... :(

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Darn, I hate that when drives die in stupid ways like that.

I just recently had a 1.5TB hard drive die because the spindle somehow got completely stuck while it was powered on. I couldn't even loosen it a tiny bit, even when I put all my muscle into the platters, they just spun in place in their mounts. Thankfully I had another copy of the data on it :P

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[deleted] will be eternally grateful.
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