How to Troubleshoot an External Hard Drive With a Hitachi 160GB USB

Problems with your Hitachi external hard drive can be difficult, as you face the prospect of potentially losing all files on the drive. Before giving up on the situation, you can attempt to troubleshoot the problem by performing a few basic substitution and repair tests to ascertain whether the problem is actually with the drive itself. This will take around 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the speed of your computer.

Things You'll Need

• USB cable

Instructions

1. Unplug the Hitachi drive from its USB port and plug it into another port on the back of the PC. This will ascertain whether the problem is with the drive or the port on the computer.

2. Swap out the current USB cord connecting the drive to the computer with a spare. This will show whether the problem is with the cable as opposed to the drive.

3. Connect the drive to the computer. Open "Start" and type "cmd" into the "Search" box. Press "Enter" to display a DOS prompt.

4. Type in "chkdsk x:" and press "Enter," replacing "x" with the letter of the Hitachi drive. This will scan the drive for errors.

References

• Computer Hope: Microsoft DOS Chkdsk Command