External HD possibly Dying?

[W@lly]

Hi all,

I would some help regarding an external 3.5inch USB2.0 Drive. It is a Freecom, 500GB in size.

This drive intermittently works and other times it gave me trouble. Then I have decided to remove its enclosure and install it to my PC via SATA [The brand of the drive is SAMSUNG HD501LJ]. This PC is currently running Windows 7 and decided to move the contents from this drive to another PATA drive in this PC.

Now the thing is I have files in it and cannot remove them, and when I tried chkdisk or the Windows 7 inbuilt checkdisk it does about 15mins and then stops. I retried checkdisk with various 3rd party tools [such as the Active @ Disk Monitor] and also removed the drive and did checkdisk with its' SATA to USB enclosure again, still it hangs after a certain amount of time.

I have also used Windows XP SP3 on other machine and even Linux Ubuntu to copy the files and then it hangs again!

All I can do is switch off the SATA to USB adapter and switch it on again [which is bad as it is a hard reset every time!] to move the files.

Also some files cannot be deleted, and thus why all software I tried is showing that it is healthy? It seems that the HD activity has a built-in timer to stop responding!

I have downloaded the SAMSUNG utility from their website as for its diagnostics and still hangs.

I have to copy it files before attempting to format it.

Can you help me in directing the right software to use?

Thanks

[Metanis]

I'm not sure about the timer theory, I'd be thinking thermal issue on the drive controller circuitry.

Can you set it up on a SATA cable but hanging outside the case and then use a fan to keep it cooler than normal? Or set the drive flat on a big piece of metal like the computer side panel? (Heatsink)

Also, is the disk circuit card loose? Might need to tighten the Torx screws they use to attach the card.

Just some random thoughts of things I would try.

-Mike

[W@lly]

Ok so far I have set it up as SATA again, and this time I did not boot into Windows, instead used Bart PE and did run chkdsk from there, where it completed successully, without hanging! and reported no bad results nor bad sectors.

Next when I restarted the PC, booted in Windows [7] and did try to run chkdisk from the OS, this time it completed the check as well, reported no errors.
However I did try to remove and move some files and it yet displays that is probably corrupted and unreadable, or to take permission.
Again I cannot delete some files, so how does Bart PE and Windows 7 checkdisk report that the drive is fine without any errors?

Now I will try to boot into Ubuntu and check whether files can be deleted or transferred, still in SATA mode.

Thanks