External hard drive cables rarely fail unless they get the same sort of abuse. USB cables can fail after prolonged use, though this is more likely to happen to the Micro USB cables used with mobile phones. EHDs that have their own power supplies tend to work more reliably. This can be a problem if the PC’s motherboard does not supply enough power to the USB port you are using or if the drive is plugged into a non-powered hub.
Some external hard drives draw their power from the USB port and they may not get enough. The port, the connecting cable, the power supply and the external hard drive (EHD) can all suffer from physical and/or electrical faults. It generally works pretty well but most people have probably suffered from a USB device failing or not being recognised. The Universal Serial Bus (USB) connects billions of keyboards, mice, joysticks, printers, external hard drives and other peripherals to roughly 1.5bn personal computers, and more than 3bn mobile phones use the smaller Micro USB and newer USB-C versions. How do I transfer them to Windows 10 for future safekeeping? Jaki My external USB hard drive, with 11,000 photos from Windows 7, isn’t recognised by Windows 10.
