Western Digital

OneMarcilV

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When I booted up my computer I found one of my external hard drive just clicks every few minutes. The computer does not recognize the drive. This happens on both of my computers.
The electric shut is self last night. The computer connected to a UPS battery back up. But for some reason the computer shuts off as soon as the electric goes off but, my modem and router stays on.

Weird that the computer is the only thing that shuts down.

The computer recognized the hard drive as a new hardware device but does not show up on the My Computer window.


Update: the hard drive after unplugging and plugging back in both lights on the front stay on all the timethe time and the hard drive is silent but the hard drive still does not show up in the My Computer window.






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I am going to give a short lecture on UPS and equipment hooked up to them...

Most generic UPS use Stepped Sine-wave, and most small electronics only needing a little bit of power will use a transformer, and some smoothing capacitors to provide power for the device, the drawback is that stepped sine-wave can cause serious damage to the power adapter, or equipment hooked up to the adapter.

Even Stepped Approximation Sine-wave (VERY close to true sine-wave) can cause issues, but it's not as likely, and most people wont splurge the extra cash for an UPS that gives true sine-wave output, seeing as the cheapest of the true sine-wave units is around $250USD


The next issue, if you had a cheap UPS, it probably doesn't have a fast switch-over time, basically, how fast it can switch from house mains to backup, sure it might be ok for low-power draw devices, but anything demanding power will just turn off.

Hate to say it, but I want to say that your HDD died due to voltage spikes from where power went out, UPS kicked on, and at the same time the PC turned off... Could have seen spikes from either the AC side, or even the USB side of the external disk.
 
1> You never hooked up the battery when you bought the unit. The positive side of most UPS are not connected from the factory. You have to slide the battery door open and remove the protective cover on the positive battery terminal then plug in the red wire from the UPS. Otherwise if you don't, when the mains drop, so does the UPS.
2> You were plugged in to the surge only side of the UPS. When the mains drop, so do those surge only outlets.

The hard drive was most likely doing something when the power dropped out and the data was corrupted. Run sfc /scannow to repair damaged system files.
 
1> You never hooked up the battery when you bought the unit. The positive side of most UPS are not connected from the factory. You have to slide the battery door open and remove the protective cover on the positive battery terminal then plug in the red wire from the UPS. Otherwise if you don't, when the mains drop, so does the UPS.

2> You were plugged in to the surge only side of the UPS. When the mains drop, so do those surge only outlets.



The hard drive was most likely doing something when the power dropped out and the data was corrupted. Run sfc /scannow to repair damaged system files.


The battery must use been hooked up because every other device stays on except for the computer.


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---------- Post added at 07:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:10 PM ----------

1> You never hooked up the battery when you bought the unit. The positive side of most UPS are not connected from the factory. You have to slide the battery door open and remove the protective cover on the positive battery terminal then plug in the red wire from the UPS. Otherwise if you don't, when the mains drop, so does the UPS.

2> You were plugged in to the surge only side of the UPS. When the mains drop, so do those surge only outlets.



The hard drive was most likely doing something when the power dropped out and the data was corrupted. Run sfc /scannow to repair damaged system files.


Where do I use that command from? I am guessing from the command prompt. Am I correct?

How will the command know which hard drive to repair?


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Run sfc /scannow to repair damaged system files.

He is talking about an external disk, sfc won't fix what is likely a busted SATA to USB controller.

The computer powering off isn't really the major issue, it's the fact that his external disk is most likely fried, or the power adapter for it is fried.
 
I do have the hard drive backed up to a back up service. But, do not know how to put what is backed up onto another hard drive.


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My PC Backup application making the restore process simple. Well worth the subscription monies.


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