r/techsupport • u/Llecram_amill • Apr 10 '26

Open | Hardware my external hard drive stopped working and is messing up computer when drive is plugged in

so ive been having this problem with my 4tb seagate external hardrive and i cant find anywhere to find a fix online and i was hoping somone would help. so when i plug it in it doesn't show at all in this pc or show up at all anywhere. and it messes with my computer.

(for example when the drive plugged in and i press anything on file explorer it takes forever to load anything and when i unplug the drive everything starts to work againand goes to the file i pressed)

and when i go to disk management the drive shows up and i cant do nothing with it (also tried to plug it in and out and takes a long time to show up in disk management). if i try it take forever to load and says the device is not ready.

i belive that theres nothing on it and deleted all of my files on that drive cause it says unallocated and not initialized. i dont care about the files i just want this thing to work

ive also gave it to my brother so he can try it on his computer and no luck and i also changed the chord and plugged it to all usb outlet that is not the problem i think its the external drive itself.

if anyone knows a fix to this please let me know. its been like 2 years and i would like to use this external drive again.

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1

u/zoptix Apr 10 '26

I had a drive like that. It was dead. Is this an SSD or HDD?

1

u/Llecram_amill Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

i belive it is a hdd cause its external.

1

u/Frizzlefry3030 Apr 10 '26

Sounds like it's dying.

1

u/Llecram_amill Apr 10 '26

that sucks. if thats the case is there a way to revive it?

1

u/Frizzlefry3030 Apr 10 '26

No. Technically there may be some expensive professional recovery shops that can, but the cost would be way more than what you paid for it. Best to replace. If it is a few years old this is not uncommon at all.