It worked the first time and now it does not see docking station

The first time that I used it I got results. The next time I tried to use it my computer does not see the station. The hard drive is turning, but the computer does not recognise that it is plugged in. I have a iMac.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for contacting Plugable Support. Sorry to hear about the issue you’re having with your iMac and our device. Is it the USB3-SATA Hard Drive Docking Station that you have? If you reboot your iMac, can you see the drive again? Some times a Mac will disable a port until reboot if there’s been a problem. Also, do you have another drive you can try?

Also, you can open the system information utility and there you should see the a listing for the device under “Mass Storage Device”

To start the System Information Utility, in finder, under go, click Utilities then choose System Information.

Let me know if this helps,

Thanks!!!
Jerome.

Jerome,
Yes it is a U3 SATA HDD Docking Station. I do not have a drive to try. I restarted the computer and still don’t see it. It does not show up in finder. I can hear the drive running, but everywhere I look I can not see the drive attached to the computer. I saw in another topic that the drive may be the problem. The S/N is 6667001900038 if this helps.
Let me know anymore thoughts please.
Andy

Hi Andy,

Can you send your Amazon order Id to support@plugable.com? Thanks for the information, we’ll get you fixed up as soon as possible.

Thanks,
Jerome.

Jerome,

Sorry it has been so long. I still am not able to see the hard drive. Do you have any other ideas. I have not shipped the old U3 back yet. Do you want the old one or the new one that you sent? Please let me know your thoughts. I don’t know if maybe the hard drive itself is bad.

Thanks,
Andy

Hi Andy,

Sorry to hear that the pretested replacement isn’t working with your setup. We made sure to run the docking station through testing before shipping it out so it’s unlikely to have failed so quickly and in the same way as the other.

To verify, is there another computer you can connect to for testing? Also, another drive would be useful to find out if it’s the drive that may have died. You can use any SATA drive, either a 2.5" laptop form factor or a 3.5" desktop size drive.

You can also check to see if the drive is visible to Disk Utility. To do that, go to finder, then “go”, then utilities. From here you can start Disk Utility. You should be able to see the drive here and options are available to repair or partition among others.

Can you check this out and tell me what you see? Regarding sending one back, let’s go with the first one since we’ve tested the second and are pretty confident it’s still functional.

Thanks for your patience,
Jerome.

Jerome,

Thank you for all of your help. I am going to ship back the old U3. I think that I am going to say that the hard drive itself is bad. I can not see it on the Disk Utility at all. I do hear the drive turning, but it must not be able to communicate. I did get some of my data off of it before it stopped seeing it. Thank you for your help!

Andy

Hi Andy,

Thanks for keeping us updated about your progress. If you are still within 30 days of your purchase date, you can return one of the docks to Amazon and send the other to us with the pre paid shipping label. If you are beyond the 30 days and don’t have any use for the other Dock just let us know at support@plugable.com. We don’t ever want one of our customers stuck with a product of ours that doesn’t work for them so send us an email if you want and we’ll get you fixed up!!

Thanks for all your patience and troubleshooting,
Happy Holidays,
Jerome.