I do a lot of video work, and I have my completed projects and other material on external hard drives, generally on at least two different drives.

I was recently nomadic for an extended period, and I put most of my stuff in a storage unit. I didn’t know if that would be safe for external hard drives, so I made sure to bring hard drives with me that had all my material, and I only put hard drives in storage that had duplicates of the material.

My stuff was in storage for about two and a half years. During that TIME, the external hard drives I brought with me have been hooked up to my computer off and on, and have worked fine. I have had about ten such drives with me, and at any given time maybe three or four are hooked up to the computer.

Different computers, by the way. Within the last two months I got a PowerSpec B719 running Windows 7. That’s made no difference as far as the functioning of the external hard drives.

A few days ago I finally got my stuff out of storage. Last night I commenced checking the external hard drives that had been in storage all that time. There were seven. The first four all worked fine when hooked up to my computer. I checked multiple files from each, and there were no problems. The next three all failed. They do not show up on my computer at all.

Bad, but not a disaster, because as I say, these were duplicates.

Today I hooked up one of the external hard drives I’ve had with me all along to my computer and it too didn’t show up. This is one I’ve used, but not in at least a few weeks or months. I then tried another, with the same result. I then got one of the four from storage that worked fine last night, and that too is not recognized.

All the ones that have been attached to the computer all along last night and today remain fine. I’m getting scared to try any others because it seems like anything not already attached won’t be recognized.

The unrecognized hard drives are different makes—mostly WESTERN Digital—and different capacities. I’m not hearing anything spinning when I plug them in. Some have indicator lights that light up when they are plugged in, so I guess they’re getting at least some power. One (the one from storage that worked fine last night and now won’t work) has green and yellow lights that are flickering continuously, which I looked up online means the drive is failing.

I’ve tried different cords, different OUTLETS, different slots in the computer, and any other configuration I can think of, but the results are the same. I also tried shutting down the computer, removing a couple of the external hard drives that are working, and restarting the computer (in case somehow the computer was overloaded with too many drives and didn’t have enough power for more), but that too did nothing.

This is serious now, because with drives other than the ones from the storage unit also failing, that means that there is a lot of material I had duplicates of (or for a few things triplicates), and now can access none of them. It’s one thing to lose backups; it’s a lot worse to lose the backups and what they were backing up. I’m screwed if all this material is lost permanently.

It’s as if starting today when I plug in a drive and connect it to the computer, something is “blowing it out.” The ones from storage I can understand maybe were damaged somehow, but now it’s happening with others that I attach too, making it seem like there wasn’t anything wrong with them until I plugged them in and hooked them up.

After having written the bulk of this post, I thought of one more thing to try. I remembered I had an old, but still functioning laptop. I tried two of the problem external hard drives with the laptop. One is the one from storage that worked fine last night but wasn’t recognized today. The other is one I’ve had with me all along that wasn’t recognized today. Neither works with the laptop. The laptop gives no indication of knowing there is an external hard drive attached to it. It’s as if they’re all really dying.Have you tried any of the 3 failed drives hooked up internally connected as slave drives ? ?
Your external enclosure may to be blame here so all is not lost.

BTW the best testing method would be only the boot HDD...and one of the other HDD's at a time...dis-connect all others for this.Thank you very much for the prompt reply.

I'm not averse to taking them apart and sticking them inside the computer, but I see that as a last resort just before I toss them. I installed an internal hard drive like that years ago, and while I recall it wasn't super hard, I also recall I had to do some research on how to do it (which I've long since forgotten). It was kind of a pain and kind of time-consuming figuring it out and then opening up the computer and such. My lazy side says let's put that off as long as possible. Plus I might well do further damage taking them apart.

There have been a few developments since I posted. I was up to six failed external hard drives, and I decided to seek out help locally. I went to a computer repair shop, and they were nice enough to give me a sort of brief consultation for no CHARGE. I brought three of the failed drives with me as examples. The guy at the shop hooked them up to a computer there. Two were dead. I hadn't heard anything earlier, but in the shop when we listened closely there was a fainter than usual version of the clicking noise that indicates a dead drive. He said they could run a full diagnostic on one of them for $60 but that he wouldn't recommend it because he could tell me already it was beyond hope. I asked if the symptoms meant it was the drive and not the enclosure and he said yes.

The THIRD one, though, worked on the computer in the shop.

I returned home and tried all three again, and none of them worked. I waited an hour or two and tried the one again that had worked in the shop, and it came on and seemed fine. So I immediately copied and pasted the contents because I have zero confidence this will remain in working order much longer.

I then tried the other three that had failed earlier in the day. Two of those remained dead, but one also was recognized by the computer, and I was similarly able to copy and paste the files from there.

So the drives that are inaccessible to me have dropped from six to four. The two that are sort of working I can safely dispose of now since I've backed up the files from them.

Recovering these two makes a big difference in terms of what's lost and what's not lost. I'm pretty sure the remaining four dead ones contain no finished video projects that I don't have on at least one other drive. What they do contain is plenty of raw footage uploaded years ago from camcorder tapes. I don't have that backed up on any other drives, though I did keep the camcorder tapes themselves. Assuming those camcorder tapes are still functional--I haven't tested any of them yet--I can simply upload them again to a new drive. (I say "simply," but it'll be hugely time-consuming.)

What's on my mind as much as anything though is the mystery of why so many drives are failing at once. Barring some bizarre coincidence, it has to be something they have in common. That rules out sitting unused in storage for over two years (since that describes some and not others), as well as age, amount of use, model, capacity, and most other factors I can think of, since the failed drives vary so much.

I do have one hypothesis, though I'm not knowledgeable enough about computers and such to know if this is at all plausible.

Most of my computer stuff--the computer itself, monitor, printer, the external hard drives that were already connected, etc.--is plugged in through a surge protector. When I started testing these other external hard drives, though, there were no spaces left on the surge protector, so I plugged them directly into the wall.

Later when I removed some of the external hard drives that had been connected all along, that opened up space on the surge protector, so I tested these drives by plugging them in there. There was no difference in the result, but that may be because something about plugging them into the wall fried something in them, and by the time I tried them in the surge protector it was too late.

I'm a little suspicious about the wiring in this place. It's a house I just moved into. It was old with questionable electrical wiring, so I invested the money to have a professional come out and put in a new box and rewire it all. The problem is, I'm now suspicious that it wasn't done right. For example, the first time I set up my TV, it was on for about a half hour and then the moment the furnace kicked in automatically, the TV turned off, like something had been overloaded. There have been a couple other incidents like that that make me wonder.

So maybe--this is pure speculation--there's something about the outlets that when I plug in these hard drives it somehow sends too much or too little power or something and shorts something out inside them.

I haven't thought of anything else that makes even that much sense.

So I got a second surge protector, and now I make sure nothing is plugged directly into the wall.

We'll see. In the meantime, I'm buying more external drives, and I'm going to be even more meticulous about making sure all my files are duplicated and triplicated (if that's a word), so the future failure of even multiple drives will be unlikely to cause the permanent loss of anything important.