When completing an external hard drive repair you need to start out with checking both hardware as well as software faults. Hardware faults can be the most detrimental to the hard drive so should be always done first.

While running the external drives on your system try listening out for unusual sounds coming from the internal components. This may indicate that the spindle or read/write heads have seized up. Worst case scenario is that the motor starting to fail (you’ll hear clicking sounds if it is). Contact a PC repair shop to open up the device and check for faults.

If the PC freezes every time the drive is connected then it may be issues with the software on your laptop. Open Device Manager and identify the external hard drive component. It has faults then will be indicated in this utility. The normal types of faults you might experience are device driver issues or conflicts with other USB devices. The application has a little Wizard utility that can help you to resolve the issue.

Other hardware issues to consider include the ports and USB cables. External hard drive repair may be unnecessary if the fault actually lies with a faulty cable. Try using a different cable and/or checking that the connector pins on the cable have not been pushed in or bent. Is also worth using a different port on your laptop (to ensure this is and that faults) or even a second PC (three isolate the problem being with external hard drive.

In terms of software checks, you may have a bad sector on the disk. This can cause PC freezes when files are attempted to be accessed in these bad sectors on the hard drive memory. Run Windows disk checking utility to attempt the repairs automatically or use a product like HDD Regenerator for more professional results.