7 Dec
2024
7 Dec
'24
5:15 p.m.
Sorry to post off-topic, but this one has me stumped. Has anybody else had a
USB port just fail on them?
I have three 3.0 USB ports on my laptop, which is a Lenovo 3.15 Ideapad, still
reasonably new (less than two years). Last night I was moving round files,
and left an external SSD plugged in when I took a nap for a few hours. (It's
a WD MyBook, Easy Store or whatever: I have a lot of these WD drives, all
similar but slightly different.)
A couple hours later, when I got up again, my laptop was almost frozen, could
only manage to get the screensaver to wake up, but couldn't get into my
system at all. The SSD light was blinking; after an hour of trying to wake up
the machine using mouse and keyboard, I gave up, did a hard shut down.
When I restarted, everything worked fine, my SSD doesn't appear to be damaged;
but the third USB port is not working now.
This is kind of crucial for how I work, because I have no working internal
hard drive at the moment; my internal SSD died awhile back, I discussed it
earlier on the list. So at present, I use USB port 1 for a small unpowered
USB hub into which I insert flash drives. USB port 2 is the flash drive on
which my working OS (Devuan Daedalus with most recent TDE stable upgrade),
and then USB port 3 is reserved for those SSD drives. When I get busy, I have
a BIG powered USB hub with enough ports to accomodate the whole neighborhood.
But I don't like to drag it out all the time, for many reasons; mainly
because I try to keep it simple and my desk uncluttered.
I could rearrange, use my powered USB hub to accomodate a new arrangement of
devices, but it seems to me that a USB port ought not to just stop working. I
have tried other SSDs, other connectors, as well as trying flash drives and
other USB gadgets, but nothing works on this USB port.
Is there any way to resurrect my seemingly dead USB port? Or can I replace
parts and put in a new 3.0 USB port, etc.?
Any help will be appreciated. If there are web pages treating this subject, I
haven't found them yet. I don't mind doing my own research, if I know where
to look. I also don't mind spending a little to repair or replace, but would
like to avoid buying yet another new machine so soon.
Bill