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Topic: External Storage Device Not Working

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Luciant

Hey everyone, I'm in a bit of a pickle and I'm hoping that someone has some advice for me.
So basically what happened is, I have a segate 1tb external hard drive connected to my ps4 as an external storage device.
Yesterday I rebooted my home's network, then rebooted my ps4 and reconnected to the network. However, when I went to play a game, I got a prompt that stated that there was no external storage device connected to my system.
I have tried rebooting my system, changing the cables on my external drive, rebooting in safe mode and re-indexing the system, and plugging it into my laptop (to which it did not appear) and tried to update its drivers and check for hardware of software malfunctions. As of yet I've had no luck.
Through observation I have noticed that the drive makes a ticking noise when powered on, to which my father suggested that the drive "does not know where to start reading [information] from". I have also noticed that the LED indicator that is built in to the drive is operational (signifying that power is flowing through the drive) and thus meaning that the drive itself is operational.
I have taken apart the drive (physically) and have found no physical abnormalities (as far as I know).
Any and all assistance is welcome.

One side note, by searching on various forums I have been informed that game save data is only stored on the system's internal storage and the only thing that was stored on the external drive was game data (i.e. the actual game itself). As I have found no other correlating information aside from this one post, I have yet to decide whether I shall take this information to heart. As such, completely resetting and wiping the external drive is my hail mary, my last resort and I hope it does not come to that.

Luciant

leucocyte

"Through observation I have noticed that the drive makes a ticking noise when powered on..."

that's usually bad news.. that's happened two of my drives. my 4gb seagate did the same thing, and i lost everything on it - i had data recovery protection, so i sent it to seagate, but got a brand new replacement shipped back. an old laptop drive did the same.. just clicks when i start it up - taking it apart it looked ok, i basically had to rig up a SATA caddy with usb and try to power it up while it was out of the housing (not just the black plastic covering, but with the entire inner workings exposed).. that's when i could see the arm moved across the disc cylinders but the heads did not read anything. the hdd can also making a clicking sound if the head gets stuck directly on a disc cylinder. powering it on will not shift it, it would have to be manually lifted and placed back in the normal starting position.

did you try connecting it to a laptop? if you're using windows.. it might say something like USB drive not recognised - device connected has malfunctioned and windows does not recognise it [can't remember the exact error for windows]. if that's the case, there's a high possibility the drive is buggered."

did you try telling the PS4 to stop using the HDD?. i used to get the "the USB storage device is not connected" error all the time on my PS4pro — i generally found using external drives pretty problematic, especially if the PS4 went into sleep mode.. to fix it, i went to the power settings and forceably had to tell it to "Stop Using Extended Storage" — this seemed to reset it, so that if i disconnected the USB cable and plugged it in again, it recognised the hdd had been connected. i also had to change the 'supply power to usb' setting to always, and haven't had the problem since (though i am also using a replacement drive).

leucocyte

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