Hello, this is my first time posting here.
So I have this pretty annoying problem I have been dealing with for the past few weeks, and I cannot find the right solution. I have purchased a WD Elements SE Portable with 2TB storage last year and up until a couple of weeks it worked like a charm, but now it shuts off automatically after 4 minutes.
If I unplug the USB cable and replug it into my PC, the HDD does show up and it lets me read the data/transfer files onto the HDD but after the 4 minutes run out it shuts off with no warning at all + the fans in the HDD turn off.
Some solutions I have tried are:
- Setting “Turn off hard disk after Setting (Minutes): Never” in the advanced power settings menu
- Running a program/batch file that puts a dummy file onto the HDD and removes it right after
- Updating the USB drivers in Device Manager
- Plugging my USB cable into other USB ports (both 3.0 and 2.0 respectively)
Despite all trying all these solutions, my problem still stands. Could my HDD be severely damaged? Why would it let me access my files nonetheless? Once during class I asked someone to try out his USB cable and plug it into mine onto a computer, but it still kept happening. This caused another problem where my HDD is only accessable on my own PC, but not the one from somebody else. It shows the HDD I cannot access it.
If you have experience with this problem in the past and you fixed it or whatever, please let me know.
Thanks!
EDIT: Forgot to say, I installed WD Drive Utilities right before I made this thread and that didn’t resolve it either, doing a scan gave me nothing.
