[FIXED] External Hard Drive Freezes Computer? Get Solutions Here!

External Hard Drive Freezes Computer

As a portable storage device, an external hard drive can be connected to a computer via a USB cable, FireWire connection, or even wirelessly. Usually, an external hard drive has a large storage capacity which is mostly used to back up your computer or serve as a network drive.

It is an annoying thing if there is something wrong with the external hard drive especially there are important files on the drive. The following external hard drive freezes computer situation from reddit.com is big trouble for most of you.

This user wants to search for a tool to recover the significant files on the Seagate external hard drive which often freezes computer when plugged in, and a piece of free data recovery software will be more appreciated.

This user thinks the external hard drive recovery cost is high and he can’t afford it. If you experience this issue, you may also want to recover data at the lowest cost. However, is there a free data recovery tool which can be used to recover data from external hard freezes computer?

When you search for a free data recovery tool on the internet, you will discover that freeware can only work on a normal working computer and the total capacity of files you can recover is limited.

When the issue mentioned in this post happens, you will be unable to use your Windows as usual. So, a free external hard drive data recovery tool can’t satisfy your need to recover data from such an external hard drive.

In this situation, you can consider using a boot edition of this MiniTool data recovery program – MiniTool Power Data Recovery Book Disk, which can run in WinPE, to rescue your files on the external hard drive.

You need to use the snap-in MiniTool Bootable Media, which is offered by the Deluxe and above editions, to create a USB boot disk or CD/DVD boot disk of this data recovery software.

How to use this software to recover data from an external hard drive? We will make a step-by-step guide in the following part. You can refer to this guide to solve your issue if you are facing the same problem.

How to Recover Data from External Hard Drive Freezes Computer when Plugged in

Preparation: Create a Boot Disk

Since the computer can run normally when the external hard drive is removed from it, you can create a boot disk on your computer directly.

Step 1: After installing and registering the software on the computer, you need to connect a USB disk or CD/DVD to your computer (in this post, we will use a USB disk as the destination disk). Then, you can open the software to enter the software interface.

On the left bottom of the interface, you can see a Bootable Media button on the top menu. You need to click on it to continue.

Step 2: This software will pop out a small window as follows. You need to click on the WinPE-based media with MiniTool plug-in option.

Step 3: Another window will appear. The connected USB flash disk will be detected and shown by this software. You need to click on it and a window generates.

The message on the pop-out window will inform you that “The data on the USB disk will be destroyed.” So, you need to make sure that there are no important files on it. Then, you can click on the Yes button to start the building process.

Step 4: When the building process is finished, you will see the following messages. Please click on Finish button to quit this interface.

Now, the MiniTool Power Data Recovery Boot Disk is prepared.

Then, it’s time for you to use this boot disk to recover data from the external hard drive.

Data Recovery: Use MiniTool to Recover Data from External Hard Drive

Step 1: Just shut down your computer, and then connect the external hard drive to your pc. Next, you need to set your computer to access BIOS. After that, you need to set your computer to boot from the boot disk. Then, you need to press F10 button to save this setting and exit this interface.

Step 2: Your computer will enter the following interface, and then launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery automatically.

Step 3: You will see the software interface.

All connected hard drives including internal hard drives and external hard drives will be displayed on this interface. The drive letters under WinPE and the drive letters under Windows Explorer may be different. So, you need to identify the target partition you want to recover by its capacity.

Hover over the drive you want to recover data from and click on the Scan button to start the scanning process.

Step 4: This software will take some minutes to finish the scanning process. After that, you will enter the scan result interface. And both deleted and existing files are shown on this interface.

On this interface, the scanned files are classified by the path. You can unfold each path to find the files you want to recover.

You can also click on Type tab to make this software show you the files in type. It can help you to find the target files quickly.

Of course, if you know the name of the file you want to recover, you can click on Find feature and enter its name to locate it directly.

Filter function allows you to make an advanced filter of the scanned files by the Filename/Extension, Size, Date, and more.

Step 5: After checking the files you want to recover, you need to click on Save button. Then, this software will pop out a window. You can choose a proper path on the computer to save these selected files.

After the recovery process, you can remove the external hard drive from your computer, and then open the PC to use the recovered files directly.

My WD passport freezes my computer. Then, I use MiniTool Power Data Recovery Boot Disk to rescue its files easily. Share it with you.Click to Tweet

If you are interested in the rest three recovery modules, you can learn them from the Data Recovery Help on the MiniTool official site.

How to Fix External Hard Drive Causes Computer to Freeze Issue

If your computer freezes when accessing external hard drive, you should consider whether there is a problem with the computer or a problem with the external hard drive.

Case 1: There Is a Problem with the External Hard Drive

If the external hard drive freezes any computer when plugged in, you should consider that there is something wrong with the external hard drive.

In this situation, you’d better recover data from the external hard drive using MiniTool Power Data Recovery Boot Disk, and then format the external hard drive to go back to its normal state.

You can also use the boot disk of this MiniTool data recovery software to format this external hard drive. So, you still need to use a full edition of this software to do this job.

Step 1: After saving data on the external hard drive, you can close the software. Then, you will be back to the MiniTool PE Loader screen. Click on Command Console to continue.

Step 2: The Command Prompt window will pop out. Please type Diskpart and press Enter button.

Step 3: Then, you need to type list disk and press Enter. Now the drives connected to the computer will be listed on the window. You can identify them from their disk number and size. Here, disk 1 is the target external hard drive.

Step 4: Now, you need to type select disk 1 and press Enter. This window will show Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

Step 5: Type clean and press Enter. Then, DiskPart will clean all files and folders on disk 1.

Step 6: To use the external hard drive as usual, you need to create a partition on that drive. So, you need to type create partition primary and press Enter.

Step 7: You also need to format the partition with a file system. For instance, if you want to use the NTFS file system, you need to type format fs=ntfs and press Enter. It will take a long time to finish this formatting process. Please be patient.

Step 8: You need to assign a drive letter for the external hard drive to make it be shown in Windows Explorer. So, please type assign and press Enter.

Now, the external hard drive is formatted with a drive letter successfully. You can shut down your computer and set the PC to boot from Windows again. After that, you can check whether external hard drive freezes computer or not.

Case 2: There Is a Problem with the Computer

Unlike case 1, when the external hard drive is connected to another computer, external hard drive causes computer to freeze issue doesn’t appear.

In this situation, your computer may have missing or corrupted system files, and you don’t need to make external hard drive recovery.

Power outage, forced shutdown of computer, and such behaviors often cause corrupted system files and drives. To fix this issue, you can try running SFC.

The Microsoft official help guide Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files teaches you how to run SFC.

If your computer freezes when accessing external hard drive, you’d better refer to the above 2 situations to determine which situation you are facing and then take corresponding measures.

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Bottom Line

External hard drive freezes computer when plugged in? Don’t worry! You can try MiniTool Power Data Recovery Boot Disk to fix this issue. Read this article to learn the skills.

Should you have any question when you are using this MiniTool data recovery program, you can leave a message below, or you can write an email and send it to [email protected]. If you have any useful solutions, you can also share with us.