Topic: O/T - Hard Disk Advice... (Read 6876 times)

pipsqueak · « **on:** April 28, 2004, 08:51:12 pm »

Im having major issues with my 3 external firewire hard disks. All this has occured within 1 month...

Firstly i lost 2 drives in 24 hours. one has a physical failure (knocking) so that needs to be changed. The other suffered a logical error. i received a message saying "hard drive inaccessible".

The first needs to be returned to manufacturer, the 2nd i simply reformatted. Since then a third drive has suffered from a logical drive error, which i also reformatted. Now ive found i get frequent corrupt files which mean i need to run chkdsk /f often.

At first i thought i had a power surge which gave me the physical error, now im thinking its because they run too hot (the cases were VERY hot to the touch). Ive since installed a fan so the disks are much cooler.

i actually run a mirrored system so i can cope with a single drive failure at a time, but im constantly fixing things at the moment. what am i missing and what else do i need to be thinking about - hdd utilities or similar?

thanks in advance
pip

GHammer · « **Reply #1 on:** April 28, 2004, 09:18:21 pm »

I imagine that you have replaced the cable that you are using, added or replaced the surge suppressor, and swapped the enclosure.

After that, I'd begin to suspect the ports from the motherboard are faulty. Do you have a riser, the ports that only have the header pins on the motherboard? Give them a try, they'd use a different circuit generally.

I have a USB2 external that must have the power cycled to be recognized on my system. Any other system it is plug & play. No errors, but I dislike odd behavior when there is no reason for it.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #2 on:** April 28, 2004, 09:22:15 pm »

GHammer

so far all i have done is upgraded the surge protector and installed a desktop fan behind the rack of disks (which does a good job of keeping them cool). i havent changed the enclosure - they are all still under warranty, and if i open the case the warranty will invalidate.

some questions?

"I imagine that you have replaced the cable that you are using" - what cable do you mean? Firewire? if so then no, is that necessary?

"Do you have a riser, the ports that only have the header pins on the motherboard?" - what does that mean?

thanks
pip

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #3 on:** April 28, 2004, 10:17:24 pm »

I have recently got an external Firewire disk drive (120Gb Western Digital w/ 8M cache).

I have problems with it periodically, related to some problem in Windows XP with copying large file (like video files of around ~70-900Mb), whereby I get a device timeout error, and the drive dissapears from my system, neccessitating a power off (for the drive) disconnect and reconnect via firewire.

This is apparently a known problem with Windows XP and Firewire drives, but thus far I have found no solution.

Check your Event Log (under Administrative Tools) and see if you have errors in the System Log...

xen-uno · « **Reply #4 on:** April 28, 2004, 10:23:23 pm »

It sounds to me like the FireWire controller is losing it. Controllers can destroy hard drives (and vice versa)...but a power surge is plausable (knocking out/damaging your ext drives).

FireWire cable...
They could be defective...but I doubt it. Your drives supply their own power, rendering the cables as signal carriers only. Any surge strong enough to damage the cables would obliterate the rest of the computer first.

Riser...
Rather than (or in addition to) a port soldered to the rear end of the motherboard, sometimes it will have another port (on the front of the case) that connects to the mobo via a flexible cable. Since FW means daisy chaining, a two port system may still be using just one controller. I would buy an add-in PCI FW card (they're cheap), install it (disable existing controller), and see if the problems go away.

10^-27

pipsqueak · « **Reply #5 on:** April 28, 2004, 10:23:49 pm »

LunchmeatVoom

ive had XP lose the disks before but these problems are different. Here i can see the drive in explorer but cant access it, when i try to do so, i get the "inacessible drive" or "corrupt file" type messages. XP's disk management screen schows the disks to be healthy but theres no way to do anything until i reformat them...

pipsqueak · « **Reply #6 on:** April 28, 2004, 10:28:01 pm »

thanks xen - i saw you were online and was hoping you'd reply...

unfortunately i use a laptop so adding a firewire card isnt easy. the laptop is under warranty however so if you think thats a decent bet i can take it to a service center and tell them to change the FW controller on the laptop..

sound reasonable?

xen-uno · « **Reply #7 on:** April 28, 2004, 10:34:26 pm »

Sure does pip. I would bet 100 quatloo's that it's a bad controller.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #8 on:** April 28, 2004, 10:59:51 pm »

xen - thanks for the info...

just 1 more question, could it have been that the drives were very HOT until i installed the fan.

the cases must have been 60 degrees centigrade (farenheit?) for many hours on end...as everytime i mirror its 100's of gigs of data being moved...

enigman · « **Reply #9 on:** April 29, 2004, 08:52:31 am »

I would definitely replace the cable. I've had hard drive problems on more than one occasion that were traced back to faulty cabling (both IDE and firewire). Once I blew out every single firewire device in a chain because of a wiring fault that caused a visible short. Nothing worse than seeing a flash followed by smoke and the smell of burning circuit board. Luckily it was only the firewire controllers that got smoked - I was able to remove the drives from their enclosures and extract the data - and Lacie was nice enough to not void the warranty when I did so.

--Tim

RemyJ · « **Reply #10 on:** April 29, 2004, 10:53:22 am »

Are the drives home built? I.E. You bought the cases and drives separately and assembled them? I ask because I had situations where the firewire-ide bridges in no-name cases destroyed hard drives. The knocking you hear are the heads coming in and out of out of park repeatedly because the controller isn't getting the "ready" feedback.

One other thing to check. A memory problem can manifest itself in many ways, one of which is bad hard drive access (the driver keeps getting corrupted). Get memtest86 (do a google). It'll catch things that the POST process won't.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #11 on:** April 29, 2004, 11:31:42 am »

i will look at the cables ... but there are certainly no sparks going on...mainly just logical errors...

enigman/remy J - the drives are lacie externals, so ive never looked inside the case

GHammer · « **Reply #12 on:** April 29, 2004, 12:04:28 pm »

The reason I say cable is because it is easy to change and cheap. And subject to damage when it is packed, handled, etc.
And can cause the kind of trouble you mention.

Next is the port itself. But as you have a laptop, that is going to get done. I'd try a friend's system and see if the drives are as flaky there. Then you will know where the problem lies.

Did you buy the drives mailorder or locally? If bought locally, I'd pack the laptop and a drive off to the store and see what they think. Kinda hard to blame this or that when the whole package is sitting there.

Finally, 60 C is hot! I just looked at a few Hitachi drive specs and the max is listed at 55 C. All of my drives are currently running at 42 C for a point of comparison.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #13 on:** April 29, 2004, 12:28:32 pm »

GHammer

thanks for the info. the situation is this...the laptop was bought locally and i have a local service warranty so that should be fine. the drives were mail under but are under warranty.

the errors are frequent but not regular - if i dragged everything to a store its unlikely to happen on demand, which is a shame - it would be nice to dump the problem on someone else!

yup 60C is HOT. and that was the external case, i have no idea how hot the drive itself was! however with the make shift fan setup the cases are cool to the touch (25C?). Although btw, my laptop's internal HDD always runs fairly hot (currently 50C and it only been on for 30 mins, often gets to 58 if defragging etc.)

pipsqueak · « **Reply #14 on:** April 29, 2004, 04:30:08 pm »

so im about ready to start throttling pc hardware manufacturers...

having spent the day arguing and cajoling fujitsu/lacie/JandR/the warranty providers... it seems the only way to get anything serviced is to send it off for a week and they will do a factory restore. im not sure they will do anything to the controller as it physically works - any ideas? apart from break it with a hammer and THEN send it in...

Xen - i have a yet another question:

1) is a bad controller a software or a hardware issue? the service companies didnt seem like they would do much about a serivce issue...

ive seen that firewire pcmia cards are available for $25 or so. i will buy one of those and see if that works any better in the interim..

thanks
pip

xen-uno · « **Reply #15 on:** April 29, 2004, 04:33:44 pm »

Definitely hardware, pip. The PC card or another FW machine would be good tests.

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #16 on:** April 30, 2004, 01:54:21 am »

Pipsqueek, this is exactly the same problem I am having.

1. The disk is mounted and visible in Explorer.

2. I try to transfer (usually large) files to the external drive.

3. It copies for a while, then aborts, and Event Viewer usually has errors about device timeouts etc., in it. Sometimes Windows tells me that the device may be corrupt.

4. After this the drive may or may not still appear in Explorer, but I cannot access it in any way, until I

a. disconnect firewire / power down the drive / power up the drive / reconnect the drive.
b. reboot the system with the drive powered on.

Sometimes (a) works, sometimes (b) is required...

It is a pain in the butt...

GHammer · « **Reply #17 on:** April 30, 2004, 10:52:37 am »

Sorry that you guys are having that sort of a problem, but glad to know it too. I was considering a FW drive enclosure, but will stay with USB 2.0. For the small speed gain with FW it sure sounds like FW and XP are not reliable.

GRAYDOG · « **Reply #18 on:** April 30, 2004, 04:04:26 pm »

xen-uno, is there a clear good, better, best ex/drive that you might recomend?

pipsqueak · « **Reply #19 on:** April 30, 2004, 04:08:28 pm »

and while we are asking Xen...is there any decent software that can manage / diagnose external hard disks (like SMART technology, but that doesnt seem to work on external HDD's)?

Im currently just speaking to them in a soothing voice, telling them to hang in there, but it doesnt seem to be doing much.

pip

xen-uno · « **Reply #20 on:** April 30, 2004, 04:31:51 pm »

'dog...

I believe that the King has a bunch of FireWire devices so he would be more qualified on recommendations. I have none other than a Sony DVD+/-RW equipped with both FW and USB2 (which I use).

pip...

Sandra can do all sorts of read/write disk tests...give it a shot.

http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_x86&langx=en&a=

10^-27

paulr · « **Reply #21 on:** April 30, 2004, 04:31:56 pm »

I have a 120GB USB 2.0 external drive (Maxtor) and I've never had any issues like those being described. I did have the electronics in the enclosure fail once (power surge, I think), but I just put the drive into a new USB drive enclosure and it's been humming along ever since.

Not sure if this helps, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #22 on:** April 30, 2004, 04:41:17 pm »

graydog

in my humble opinion its not my drives that are the issue. its the firewire interface which im sure windows is designed to operate disfunctionally with. i'd go for usb, or at least a dual interface drive. xfer speeds are (for all practical purposes) the same.

pip

KingSparta · « **Reply #23 on:** April 30, 2004, 05:21:10 pm »

I have 3 Maxtor External drives

1. 160 Gigs FireWire
2. 160 Gigs FireWire
3. 300 Gigs FireWire\USB

They All Work Good. I like The 300 Gig Drive The Best.

It is A Maxtor One-Touch

I like firewire better because you can dassy chain 64 devices (I only have 3) but i also do not want to use up all my USB ports.

GRAYDOG · « **Reply #24 on:** April 30, 2004, 06:13:53 pm »

If I have room in My box is it better to go with internal or is external better for some reason ? also I have read that externals don't last aslong as internal is that true?

paulr · « **Reply #25 on:** April 30, 2004, 06:18:08 pm »

If you don't need an external drive, then I would go internal. External drives don't seem to stay as cool as internal ones (at least in my case). Internal drives will also have better performance than external.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #26 on:** April 30, 2004, 06:25:47 pm »

What! An external drive is nothing more than an internal one, but mounted outside the case. as long as the case its in has a good fan / cooling mechanism its the same thing.

reasons for external = portable, modular (can add as many as needed), easy to install

against = slower than internal (same disk, but connection slower), hard (but not impossible) to boot from, takes up usb/firewire port, more expensive (have to pay for enclosure), usually needs external power supply (excluding the smaller slower HDDs)

pip

Alex B · « **Reply #27 on:** April 30, 2004, 06:46:09 pm »

It was not a long time ago when external drives were connected by SCSI interface.
Now I have those not so old Adaptec PCI cards lying somewhere in the storage boxes.

And soon we'll have this. X-bit Labs article:
External SerialATA Interface: First Facts about the Unannounced Standard.

paulr · « **Reply #28 on:** April 30, 2004, 07:28:40 pm »

Quote

What! An external drive is nothing more than an internal one, but mounted outside the case. as long as the case its in has a good fan / cooling mechanism its the same thing.

Yes, external hard drives are the same... However the enclosure it is in is very different. The enclosure I have is plastic. There is a very small amount of space between the enclosure and the drive for air to move. Most of the enclosures do not have fans, or at most very small ones. Unless you get an expensive case to mount them in, external drives will most likely get hotter. Mine certainly does.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #29 on:** April 30, 2004, 08:03:29 pm »

xen

i downloaded the SANDRA program and ran some tests. The program hangs every time it gets to the Card Bus section, specifically the PCI Bus 1 (1*PCICLK), whereas the other card bus is okay. I guess that this thing could contain the firewire controller device.

i've ordered the firewire pc card, so will see if things are better then.

thanks for the advice
pip

Sam · « **Reply #30 on:** May 01, 2004, 03:00:41 am »

I'll toss in my 2 cents...

I have a Maxtor One-Touch 200 GB Firewire/USB.
It's connected via Firewire, and I haven't had any problems yet.

And it's cooler than the internal drives I've had, and much easier to install.
It also seems a lot quieter.

I don't think I'll ever buy another internal drive.

KingSparta · « **Reply #31 on:** May 01, 2004, 05:20:59 am »

Quote

The enclosure I have is plastic

the maxtor One-Touch is metal so it cools better than the older cases

GRAYDOG · « **Reply #32 on:** May 01, 2004, 06:18:25 am »

Quote from: KingSparta on May 01, 2004, 05:20:59 am

Quote
The enclosure I have is plastic

the maxtor One-Touch is metal so it cools better than the older cases

King , the maxtor one touch has been mentioned a few times do You use the one touch button for back up or is it just there ?

fex · « **Reply #33 on:** May 01, 2004, 07:45:37 am »

Quote from: GRAYDOG on May 01, 2004, 06:18:25 am

King , the maxtor one touch has been mentioned a few times do You use the one touch button for back up or is it just there ?

I currently use 3 of Maxtor's One Touch, two are 'just there', one is for backup. One of them is a 'first generation' one (200 Gigs, case is plastic), two newer ones have the metal case (200 and 250 Gigs), all of them USB/Firewire. The plastic one get's a little bit hot, but no problems so far concerning this.

First I had all of them daisy chainded via firewire, my iPod was last in chain. But threre were some troubles to disconnect the Pod (XP lost at least one of my Maxtor's too), so now I use them over USB. Since then no problems at all over the last months.

Alex B · « **Reply #34 on:** May 01, 2004, 08:52:11 am »

I would like to ask a question concerning back-ups in general.

In your opinion, what would be a good back-up strategy for a big media library (100 GB and up)? CDs/DVDs and reasonably priced tape systems are too small and slow, so it has to be a hard drive solution.

Currently I have in my "home entertainment center" PC two recently bought 160 GB internal drives. For back-ups I have several older hard drives, which I can use with removable hard drive racks. Now they are becoming too small and it's too complicated to make back-ups with them.

I must admit that my back-ups are never quite up-to-date nowadays. They used to, but I have been too busy with other things to keep that on. I have to make a new back-up strategy as soon as possible.

Besides my media library, I must have an easy back-up strategy for my system files and all installed software. Practically that means the whole C: partition (currently 20 GB), because my media files and temp/swap space are kept in other partitions. In case of a hard drive crash it would probably take several weeks to install all software and drivers again and configurate them.

Recently I got a Trojan horse into my system; even I had an up-to-date virus scanner and a firewall. It wrecked the registry. No .exe file was identified as program after that. A handicapped system was started, but I couldn't start any program to do something to cure my system. XP system recovery saved my day (=read as: forthcoming weeks) at that time. It was a good warning for me.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #35 on:** May 01, 2004, 10:45:15 am »

Quote from: Alex B on May 01, 2004, 08:52:11 am

In your opinion, what would be a good back-up strategy

Doing it regularly!

I too have suffered some critical errors over the last few months and now thanks to the advice of people on this board was recommended cobian backup (free) and centered.com's second copy ($30?). i currently use centered because it is able to make exact copies. ie. if i delete something from one of my disks it deletes it in the backup also. cobian wont delete anything.

basically i'd suggest getting enough HDD space to mirror anything you would be upset to lose, these programs can run automatically in the background every few hours.

Anything extremely vital i also keep backed up on DVD (documents and data, not music as the library is too large - and besides i still have the original CD's)

pip

Alex B · « **Reply #36 on:** May 01, 2004, 12:25:11 pm »

Thank's Pips, Second Copy sounds promising.

paulr · « **Reply #37 on:** May 01, 2004, 01:06:54 pm »

Another option for backups is using a RAID array. RAID arrays area a nice way of ensuring data redundancy and in some configurations give a performance benefit... However, you won't be able to keep a copy of your files offsite (if that was one of you requirements), and you won't be able to do this with external drives (USB/Firewire).

Many newer motherboards have RAID built in, so it would only be a matter of getting the drives for it.

Robert Taylor · « **Reply #38 on:** May 01, 2004, 05:31:11 pm »

I use a RAID 5 array consisting of 4 X 80Gb Seagate Barracudas hanging off a Promise SX4000 PCI RAID controller (with 256Mb cache on board).

My media library is one partition on the RAID 5 array, of about 175Gb (not full).

I have the external firewire 120Gb drive as a backup, using software called DirSync, which I can batch run jobs in to keep the external drive sync'd to the media library contents.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #39 on:** May 01, 2004, 05:49:41 pm »

Alex B

raid is definately good if your setup allows it. second copy and the like are good, but a lower tech solution.

cobian is good and free

second copy is better as it will also delete files off the copy that no longer exist on the original. it also has a 10 day free option so you can trial it

however none of these options addressed the fact that everything is still onsite. if you have a fire / theft your still stuffed...

offsite options get trickier: DVD's are cheap but an effort, but at nearly 10 gigs on a disc, you can drop a lot of important data every few months and leave it with a friend - my current plan.

im always open to better solutions so if anyone has any lets hear them...

pip

Alex B · « **Reply #40 on:** May 01, 2004, 06:31:21 pm »

I might use RAID 0 for video editing, but I don't think RAID is a solution for my backups.

This is what I plan to do:

1. I need a bit-to-bit copy of my OS and software installations. Not necessarily daily, but frequently enough. This can be done with the Norton Ghost or similar application. I need at least two removable copies. One is kept in a safe place. The other one is next to my PC. After I have made a full backup I exchange the copies. I could do that e.g. once in a week or anytime before making new installations. No intermediate backups are necessary because the backup size is below 20 GB and it should be quite fast. I can use my rack mounted hard drives for that.

2. Then there is my media library and other personal data files. Here I also need at least two removable copies: one for the "safe" and the other one for constant updates. Once in a week I update the drive kept in a safe place with the data from the constantly updated drive and exchance them after that. I may use my Notebook for updating. Just to make sure that there is no situation where all instances of my library drives are powered at the same time. I think it's best to buy two identical USB2 & firewire drives. E.g. Maxtor One Touch 300 GB. That will be enough storage space for now. Software solution could be that Second Copy. There is Retrospect Express software included with Maxtor. Any experiences?

Besides that I can also make additional daily backups for changed files to one of the rack mounted hard drives.

This strategy gives me three full copies of everything. The most recent copy is in the PC and the others are on the removable drives. One copy is always kept in a safe place. The OS/software backup is at maximum two weeks old and the oldest library backup is not older than one week. In the worst-case scenario something disastrous happens when I am doing my backups and I loose two copies.

OK, the third copy can be destroyed too, but it's unlikely that it happens at the same time. I can also die tomorrow. You can't backup everything.

paulr · « **Reply #41 on:** May 01, 2004, 08:57:24 pm »

For backing up your library, you might want to have a look at Karen's Replicator at http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp . I think it meets your requirements and is free.

GHammer · « **Reply #42 on:** May 01, 2004, 11:46:03 pm »

Quote from: Alex B on May 01, 2004, 08:52:11 am

I would like to ask a question concerning back-ups in general.

In your opinion, what would be a good back-up strategy for a big media library (100 GB and up)? CDs/DVDs and reasonably priced tape systems are too small and slow, so it has to be a hard drive solution.

I have USB2 external drives here and they work very well.
I use SureSync for backups. It can run as a service, can monitor folders for changes, has all sorts of options yet is easy to use. I rate it as the MC of the backup world.

The same company has a system recovery app, but I have never used it. I simply keep all data and the OS is on its own

http://www.spursuits.com/

Give it a try, I installed many before finding this, its the best!

pipsqueak · « **Reply #43 on:** May 04, 2004, 08:16:17 pm »

Quote from: paulr on May 01, 2004, 08:57:24 pm

For backing up your library, you might want to have a look at Karen's Replicator at http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp . I think it meets your requirements and is free.

just tried this one out and it seems better thn the 2 i suggested previously. its free and will delete files at the destination as necessary (a good thing) and it will do incremental backups...

thanks for the suggestion

pip

KingSparta · « **Reply #44 on:** May 05, 2004, 05:35:16 am »

Quote from: GRAYDOG on May 01, 2004, 06:18:25 am

Quote from: KingSparta on May 01, 2004, 05:20:59 am
Quote
The enclosure I have is plastic

the maxtor One-Touch is metal so it cools better than the older cases
King , the maxtor one touch has been mentioned a few times do You use the one touch button for back up or is it just there ?

I have not used it, thats really not what i use the drive for

but you need to install software, once you push the button the computer tetects it and loads a program that does your backup.

one thing not said, when the drive is not used for some time it goes into standby mode the older ones did not go into standby.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: O/T - Hard Disk Advice... (Read 6876 times)

fex