External HDD question (Windows OS)

Satyaa wrote:

Carey Brown wrote:

Billiam29 wrote:

Satyaa wrote:

Background:

I use two 4TB external HDDs (probably 5 years old by now) on my Windows desktop (also 5+ years old) to back up my photos (among other things).

I use a free s/w called FreeFileSync to back up photos from my PC to HDD 1 every week. Then I use the same s/w to sync up HDD 1 to HDD 2 once a month.

Could you elaborate on why you’re not just syncing PC-to-HDD 2 once per month? With a file sync-based regimen, I’m having trouble envisioning why you’re using HDD 1 as the backup source for your monthly backup to HDD 2.

This of course does not address what is going on with your current situation. Having said that, if you take HDD 1 out of the picture as being the source for HDD 2 and everything works, then maybe that’s all you need.

Your backup scheme doesn't make sense to me either. You should have at least two backup drives that you swap out in rotation so that if one fails you haven't lost every thing. In your scheme HDD-2 is your only real backup. Your HDD-1 is just a temporary backup.

I have taken care of that. Between the camera cards, desktop and two HDDs, there are always two copies of my files, sometimes three. I delete the files on the card once the processed files on desktop have been backed up. When I sync one HDD to the second, there are three copies probably for a year. I delete photos older than a year from my desktop and each HDD has a copy at that point.

Assuming that you have enough room on your internal drives for all of your original files then I would just rotate between HDD-1 and HDD-2 and forget the 1-->2 copying.

It has been suggested that you swap things out one at a time to narrow down the culprit. You may want to get a third external drive and see if that works. Either way you'd end up with 3 drives in your backup rotation which would be better still.

There are memory test programs, have you tried one of those?

I have tried HDD test programs both from the manufacturer and third-party. Found no issues.

Thanks

I meant *memory* as in RAM.