Chosen Solution
I found an external storage drive (technically a hard drive inside some plastic) made by Toshiba in my parent’s basement today. They weren’t using it anymore so I decided I would use it for my MBP. When I went to erase it so I could use it again (the storage was maxed) the process of erasing the hard drive inside the enclosure took FOREVER (appx. 4-5 hours) before it finally threw an error in disk utility. I tried erasing the hard drive again but I had the same scenario. Is it time to toss this drive or could I try anything else to revive it?
Hard drives are not worth repairing and are physically impossible to repair anyway, don’t bother.
I’ve had issues with USB controllers in external hard drive bays causing weird issues like that. If you open it, pull the HDD and connect it directly to your motherboard through SATA, you can determine whether it’s a bad drive or a USB controller issue.
