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Thread: Photos Trapped on External Drive
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2021-02-10, 11:50 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Photos Trapped on External Drive
I’m trying to migrate photos off an external HDD, but I’ve hit an impasse.
For some reason the drive is running incredibly slowly, to the point that it would take hours to transfer batches of photos that should only take minutes to move. Everything involved is old—the HDD is several years old, and I’m limited to a laptop that’s over ten years old.
I’m trying to move the files from the HDD to a flash drive, using the two USB ports on the old laptop. I was able to do this easily with another, even older external drive, but for some reason the current HDD is gurking out. Apart from taking immensely longer to transfer files, it keeps hanging up and claiming it can’t find the file path to finish transferring individual photos.
Clicking “OK” on that message stops the process, and after trying that several times I’m stuck. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the external drive, the USB ports or the flash drive, and at this point I’m not sure what to do.
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2021-02-10, 12:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2009
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
I don't know your technical expertise, but you might want to consider some computer tech shop. Downtown where I live, there's a couple "computer repair" places. I'd double-check reviews to make sure they have a good reputation, but someone there might be able to help. Of course, might be pricey (for a given definition of pricey.)
I had something happen with a computer so that it was dead, but the data on the harddrive was still viable. A friend who did work like that was able to take the harddrive out and copy the data from it to another medium for me. Not exactly the same issue, but it might be similar enough that someone could "open up" the external drive and copy it more directly than how it sounds like you're doing.
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2021-02-10, 01:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
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2021-02-10, 01:25 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
Not to mention exceedingly expensive.
If it's the external's USB interface, popping the drive out and hooking it up via standard cable as an internal drive is no issue, unless you have a sata-USB device.
Sometimes, though, the reasons for failure can show up in the event log. My suggestion is to pull up the Administrative Events in the Custom Views, plug in the external, try to copy, and let us know about any USB, Device or NTFS failures that result.May you get EXACTLY what you wish for.
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2021-02-10, 03:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
After trying to work with it some more, I'm pretty sure it's a faulty USB port.
Also, one of the USB drives I was using to test it suddenly stopped working, and now doesn't show up at all. Could a damaged USB port somehow short out a USB drive?
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2021-02-10, 03:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- Indianapolis
- Gender
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
With an electrical/cabling issue or if the control circuit for it went bad, potentially yes - something may have happened to cause the bad port to send more power than asked for over the connection to the drive and resulted in damage to the cable and/or the external drive's own USB connector.
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2021-02-10, 04:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
Is there any way to recover what's on the USB drive? Of course it's the one with recent files I really need.
Also, does this mean I shouldn't trust those USB ports with anything else?
.Last edited by Palanan; 2021-02-10 at 04:18 PM.
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2021-02-10, 04:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
Depends. Of course, the first thing to check is if the thumb drive works on a different USB port. Determine which problem is the problem.
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2021-02-10, 04:25 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
Yup, I've been going back and forth between two computers--a very old Dell and a Mac. I've tried several flash drives on both, and they work fine on both.
The suddenly-fritzed flash drive isn't working on either. Tried several times apiece, no joy.
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2021-02-10, 04:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
Then you have a problem. The kind that'll take a professional tech reading the data off the drive after cracking it open.
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2021-02-10, 04:32 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
I had a feeling that might be the case. Any sense of how much that tech will cost?
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2021-02-10, 04:53 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
No. Don't know what your local rates are like. But if you are seeing a tech for that, dealing with the HDD won't actually be much more expensive if you add that to the service appointment since you'll already be paying the flat fees.
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2021-02-10, 04:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- Indianapolis
- Gender
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
If it's an actual external hard drive, either solid state or spinning platter, it may be as simple as shucking the USB shell off of it and plugging it into a different means of accessing it (directly plugging it into a computer, connecting it to a drive copier device, just swapping it into a different USB shell - there's a few ways to do that.) Most of those drives are basically just normal hard drives that have their input/output ports routed through a USB interface and wrapped in a plastic shell - if that works, it should be fairly inexpensive.
If you have an actual flash drive (basically a small stick of solid-state storage that is wired to a USB dongle) they'll likely have to try to remove the existing dongle and solder in a new one or otherwise find a way to bypass the damaged port, or even try to perform data recovery directly from the storage. That is finicky, time consuming, and requires more specialized skills and tools.. so expect to pay quite a bit.
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2021-02-10, 05:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
And by "quite a bit," do you mean hundreds? Because that would be out of reach.
As for the faulty port, the laptop hung up for a long while during one of its recent shutdowns, and the last time I restarted it I heard a couple of loud "kechunks" from somewhere in the innards.
It finished restarting and my files are right where I left them, but I have a feeling the laptop is about ready to go.
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2021-02-10, 05:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- Indianapolis
- Gender
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
Couldn't say on price without actually going and asking some of your local repair shops/tech services for quotes, but I would not be surprised.
..yeah, you don't want to hear anything audible from inside a computer except for spinning fans. Something is dying in there, and I would suggest trying to avoid using it except for strictly necessary tasks until you are able to replace it/can get any critical items on it backed up elsewhere (possibly to an online service like OneDrive or Google Drive, given the issues you report having trying to load to/from an external drive.)
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2021-02-17, 12:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
Re: Photos Trapped on External Drive
It would likely be cheaper just to buy a new enclosure. Expect to pay $10 for a 2.5" enclosure and $20 for 3.5" (the 3.5" need a power supply, the 2.5" can use USB power). Presumably the old enclosure was old enough that it didn't encrypt the drive (in which case you will have lots of trouble and may wind up having to match the exact SKU with the original). If it is ancient enough to be an IDE drive, this is far better than trying to find a desktop to read it (you'll need an even more expensive cable to connect a 2.5" IDE drive to anything).
Anyone with a desktop computer and willing to open the case and plug it in should be able to read the HDD once it is out of the enclosure. Note that some enclosures encrypt the drive to prevent this, but they should be much more recent than OP's drive. Even more recent drives require kaptan tape to be put over some of the power leads on the HDD. Google "shucking": since external HDDs are cheaper than internal HDDs, enthusiasts of large amounts of data have turned to "shucking" for their drives.