Is it me or the disk?

[unbiased]

In the last one year or so, I have suffered data loss and a lot of frustration due to the demise of three external USB Hard disks, while in my computer usage of about 8-9 years I never had an internal hard disk failure in my desk top or lap top.

I use my hard disks with due care so mechanical jerks etc can be ruled out. It seems it is something inherent to the design of USB harddisks. Two times it happened when I was forced to power off the computer as it was taking forever to shut down, becasue I had forgotten to stop the usb hard drive first, and once I had taken out the USB connection while the drive was being accessed. I think USB interface for these drives is too prone for such mistakes.

My Flash drives work without problem.

Anybody else faced similar problems?

 

[Old Hippie]

Two times it happened when I was forced to power off the computer as it was taking forever to shut down, becasue I had forgotten to stop the usb hard drive first, and once I had taken out the USB connection while the drive was being accessed.

Soo, you do exactly what you're not supposed to do and then wonder why the drives are failing? :laugh:

Open the side of your case and unplug the internal drives while they're being accessed.

Let's see if you get any data loss with that scenario.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: unbiased
In the last one year or so, I have suffered data loss and a lot of frustration due to the demise of three external USB Hard disks, while in my computer usage of about 8-9 years I never had an internal hard disk failure in my desk top or lap top.

Anybody else faced similar problems?

You have perpendicular recording and areal density to thank for your problems.
Isn't advancing technology just grand! :thumbsup::laugh:

Now we can benchmark much higher...
When we're not sending our drives off for RMA. :roll:


BTW, Are your external drives formatted in FAT32 or NTFS?

 

[nobb]

^Are you saying perpendicular recording and higher densities make drives less reliable? I wonder if the high density makes them less accurate. In all my years of owning hard drives, I have never had any problems...until I got my new high density 500GB 2.5 WD notebook drive. I started developing bad sectors within a month. Same thing happened with the new drive WD sent me as an RMA. And same goes for the RMA after that.

Another thing to consider about external drives is that to power them off, most of them simply use a switch that just cuts off power. I believe in a system, the process of powering off a drive happens in a more controlled manner. If you look at some spec sheets for hard drives, you will notice they may be rated for 300,000 load unload (or soft power off) cycles, but the hard unload cycles (aka cutting power suddenly) may only be 50,000. I am assuming from this that cutting power off suddenly is worse off to the disk than it is to perform a soft off.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: nobb
Are you saying perpendicular recording and higher densities make drives less reliable?
I wonder if the high density makes them less accurate.

* Yes
* Accuracy and failure walk hand in hand

 

[Binky]

If your USB drives are configured for quick removal (i.e. no write caching), you shouldnt have a problem. This is usually the default config for external drives in windows...unless you change it. I do all kinds of horrible things to my USB and flash drives, and I have not lost one yet.

Something else may be at fault.

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: nobb
Another thing to consider about external drives is that to power them off, most of them simply use a switch that just cuts off power. I believe in a system, the process of powering off a drive happens in a more controlled manner. If you look at some spec sheets for hard drives, you will notice they may be rated for 300,000 load unload (or soft power off) cycles, but the hard unload cycles (aka cutting power suddenly) may only be 50,000. I am assuming from this that cutting power off suddenly is worse off to the disk than it is to perform a soft off.

Eh? HD gets the 'off' signal, then it flushes the cache, and spins down. What more do you want? It doesn't matter what interface the HD unit uses.

If you just power off the external, then the HD don't get the 'off' signal, and it don't have a chance to flush the cache, which can cause data loss, which is why your not supposed to do that.

 

[nobb]

Originally posted by: Elixer


Eh? HD gets the 'off' signal, then it flushes the cache, and spins down. What more do you want? It doesn't matter what interface the HD unit uses.

If you just power off the external, then the HD don't get the 'off' signal, and it don't have a chance to flush the cache, which can cause data loss, which is why your not supposed to do that.

I was thinking more of the physical stresses to the hard drive. I believe when it gets an "off" signal, then the drive has the chance to park it's heads first. Whereas when you suddenly cut power, it will have to use the rotational energy of the spinning disks to generate it's own power to park the heads. Apparently this must be more stressful for the drive since they are rated for 50k hard unload cycles vs 300k+ soft unload cycles.

 

[jadelee]

Tnx a lot for all of you, guys! I had the same problems and now i solved them owing to you!