Seagate External Hard Drive Freezes Computer | Best 5 Fixes

Causes behind Seagate hard drive freezes the computer

Seagate external drive is one of the best options when you need to choose or upgrade your HDD performance. However, one day when you try to plug in your Seagate external hard drive to the computer but only find “Holy shit, the Seagate external hard drive freezes my computer!” It’s terrible because you can barely execute any tasks on such occasions. Before getting to know how to unfreeze your computer when Seagate external hard drive is plugged in, you need to acquaint with the underlying reasons beforehand.

There are various underlying causes behind Seagate hard drives freezing your computer.

✦Faulty external hard drive: Your faulty Seagate external hard drive may be the core of the problem, which may be caused by your faulty partitions on the drive.
✦Malware or virus attacks: Your PC security may be put into a dangerous situation with important data leaking or loss.
✦Impropriate permission: Sometimes, your PC may don’t have the necessary permission to read the hard drive. You can set your PC to have the permission to take full control of your drive and then you are good to go.
✦Outdated drivers: The driver for the external hard drive that freezes computer might be outdated. At this time, you need to update the driver to get the problem solved.

How to fix Seagate external hard drive freezes computer

Although Seagate hard drive freezes computer seems to be a common problem, you need to solve it as soon as possible. There are several solutions for your convenience.

• Method 1. Run the hardware and devices troubleshooter
• Method 2. Run a full system scan
• Method 3. Run CHKDSK
• Method 4. Change permission
• Method 5. Update the HDD driver
• Supplement: make a regular backup for your computer

Method 1. Run the hardware and devices troubleshooter

If your Seagate freezes Windows Explorer or the whole system, it might be your PC issue. The first course of action here is to run the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter.

Step 1. Open your Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

Step 2. Enter the command below and hit Enter.

msdt.exe -id DeviceDiagnostic

Step 3. Then wait patiently for the command to finish.

Method 2. Run a full system scan

As the underlying reasons we mentioned before, your computer might be attacked by malware or virus. Thus, the purpose of running a full system scan is to get rid of any risks or malware or virus attacks. Windows Defender, the built-in tool of Windows 10 scans for malicious or virus threats effectively.

Step 1.  Press Windows + S and type Defender, and press Enter to open Windows security.

Step 2. In the left tab page, choose Virus & threat protection and then locate Scan options under Current threats.

Step 3. Following scroll down to choose Full Scan.

Step 4. Don’t forget to click Scan now to wait for the prompt.

Method 3. Run CHKDSK

If your hard drive freezes your computer when connected just like a secondary hard drive, it might be down to a corrupt partition. Running the CHKDSK command will scan and fix the problems if possible.

Step 1. Launch Command Prompt and then choose Run as administrator.

Step 2. Type the command chkdsk /f /r Y: and hit Enter.

✍Note: Y stands for the number where your Seagate hard drive is allocated.

Step 3. Job done.

Method 4. Change permission

Step 1. Open File Explorer and right-click the problematic external hard drive.

Step 2. Choose the Properties option.

Step 3. Select the Security tab at the top and click the Edit button in “To change permissions, click Edit ...”.

Step 4. Click the Add… button.

Step 5. Type everyone in the open space.

Step 6. Finally, check the box for Full control and click OK.

Method 5. Update the HDD driver

Step 1. Press Windows +X and select Device Manager.

Step 2. Double-click the Disk drives option to expand it and right-click Seagate hard drive.

Step 3. Choose Update Driver.

Step 4. Select Search automatically for drivers and install any available update.

Supplement: make a regular backup for your computer

A regular backup for your computer is a good habit. Problems like Seagate hard drive freezing computer happens normally but it can cause some disasters for your data reserved. Regular or automatic data backup proves to be efficient in preventing data loss at anytime and anywhere. AOMEI Backupper Standard is the best free backup software that offers reliable backup options for users.

✩Various backup options: you can backup any file you want, from a local disk to an external disk, USB drive, network path, or cloud drive, etc.
✩Automatic backup: it offers five backup modes, you can choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Event triggers and USB plug-in modes to backup systems, applications, personal files, and so on. For example, it performs Samsung T5 automatic backup in a good manner.
✩Backup method: It offers 3 backup methods: full, incremental and differential backup. You can choose the create a whole copy of all your files or, you can just backup the changes. Differential backup is a paid feature, you can upgrade to the paid version to enjoy this feature.

Now download AOMEI Backupper and launch it.

Step 1. In the left tab page, select Backup and then select File Backup.

✍Tip: If you want to backup the whole computer, you can choose Disk Backup alternatively.

Step 2. Click Add File or Add Folder so you can select files/folders you want to backup.

Step 3. Then select the location as the destination path to store the image file.

Step 4. Finally, click the Start Backup button and wait for the process to complete.

✍Tip: You can click the underneath Schedule Backup option to set automatic backup.

Conclusion

The core problem of Seagate external hard drive freezes computer is the external hard drive. Now you can use the above five methods to detect the exact reason and then perform the proper rescue. However, in order to prevent unnecessary data loss, we kindly advise you to backup your computer regularly. AOMEI Backupper, serve as the best Samsung T7 SSD backup software, offers multiple backup options for Windows users with high reliability.