USB device misbehaving

[dantheman]

Hi,

A couple of years ago, i acquired a 40G USB device to backup my notebook to.
It works but often does weird things, like, it sounds like it's spinning around for nothing, shifting to and from the neutral area in a rather sporadic way.

When it's finally stable, i can perform backups and defrag it etc. but often i find myself turning it off/on to finally get it doing. Is this a sign that it's days are counted?

[iphigenie]

maybe

How many machines have you tried it on?

it could also mean that the usb port is not giving it enough power - i had a device which was misbehaving and eventually (when using another device) i figured out that some of my usb ports have flaky power...

Also, always change the cable first - its cheap and you will kick yourself if it turns out to be the cable. Usually usb cables are pretty simple/easy, but this rule is a good one nonetheless

[jgpaiva]

In this case, you probably should check SMART, to see the state of the disk.

[mouser]

Is this a sign that it's days are counted?

very likely.
sounds like the hard disk is dying -- get all important info on it backed up somewhere else.
can you open it up and replace the hard drive?

[f0dder]

+1 for the "sounds like the disk in the USB enclosure is dying". Trouble spinning up, unnatural sounds etc. are never a good sign when there's a harddrive involved.

It could be the USB bridging electronics that are acting up, you could try taking out the disk and installing it directly... but whatever it is, it sounds like the device's days are counted.