External Hard Drive Problems

[Beerz101]

I bought a WD My Passport 3TB External Hard drive for school, when I try to use it it doesn't work at all. It will freeze and wont copy big files over but pdfs and word documents are fine. I tested the Hard Drive on my Surface Pro 2 and it works fine I can copy anything on to it. Any ideas?

 

[leeshor]

Welcome to the forum

Is that one of the Passports that plugs into AC? If so it may need more power. If not you may need a powered USB HUB.

 

[Beerz101]

It's one that just plugs in to use no ac. I have also plugged in a friends 2 tb passport and it worked fine.

 

[leeshor]

Some drive pull more power than that USB can output. You could try with the power plugged into your Surface.

 

[sharpuser]

@Beerz101

I had this problem about a year ago with a 2TB Passport drive and my Surface Pro 3.
I reformatted the drive ExFAT from that same SP3, and the problem went away.
Needless to say, I worried about the data for about a month after that, but have never had a problem. Now, my entire media library lives on it.

And I'm typing this on that same SP3 while playing music from the drive via iTunes right at the moment.