Failing external HDD (?)--what to do?

[KJC]

I have had this 6TB La Cie external drive for about three years now. It is about half full.

I have probably close to 1 TB of music files (99% of them FLAC), which I play through my Foobar2000 app. For some time now, I have been noticing that in some tracks, there is a one second dropout (a second of silence).

I also have all of my photos (about 2TB ) backed up on this drive.

Here are the latest issues (today!)

Cannot copy NEF files to USB flash drive (practically brand new!). Error messages about hardware failure. The same exact files copy to the exact same drive without issue from a different drive (internal HDD).

Viewing NEF files in Widows abominable Photos app shows that some photos will not generate previews--or the previews look as if they were taken with a 0.001 MP sensor. I usually avoid this app like the plague, but wanted to take a quick look.

Launching RawTherapee and viewing the files leads to RT crashing after four or five thumbnails have loaded. I have never seen this before! This happens for three different folders of NEF files.

Trying to scan the drive with Windows Defender leads to the Windows Defender spash screen and the hourglass...and nothing else.

Can someone suggest how to launch a scan and/or what I should do in this situation!? Is this three-year old drive toast?

Thanks for any suggestions.

EDIT: OK, I found Scan and Repair. App stated that there are errors on the disk...

 

[BobKnDP]

If you're up for some (easy) command line stuff, you could use chkdsk .

The /f switch "fixes" errors on the drive. (It actually marks bad sectors so they won't be used.)

With the /f switch, It can take a long time to run.

Data may be lost in the process.

Before doing that, I'd check the "smart" status of the drive using a utility like crystaldiskinfo (freeware).

 

[David Lal]

Can someone suggest how to launch a scan and/or what I should do in this situation!? Is this three-year old drive toast?

Yes, it would seem to be and drives in poor condition only become worse: I certainly would not rely upon it as my only repository for material that is important to me. In fact I would not use it at all probably.

Bob's right. The utilities to run are firstly CrystalDiskInfo and secondly Window's own chkdsk.

CrystalDiskInfo is a wonderfully powerful, free program that will give results of detailed checks on the disk. Those results can be complicated to interpret but are simply summarised as Health Status=good, bad, failure warning.

Chkdsk is run from a Windows command prompt. To check a drive with drive letter D, the syntax is:

chkdsk D: /F /R

This tells the operating system to repair broken files if it can and mark the disk's corrupt sectors as unuseable.

In my opinion your drive is going to fail and when it does you'll likely lose everything. Get a replacement as soon as you can. Consider getting two so that you can backup the backup (I do).

Good luck!

 

[KJC]

Thanks, yes, everything's backed up on other drives. I have had instances in which drives were scanned and repaired and functioned with no issues for several years afterward. However, I agree, one can't be too careful with important files.

 

[Morris0]

All of what Bob suggested will only confirm what you already know. The drive is bad. As this is a backup drive, get a new drive, make a new backup and dispose of your e-waste properly.

Morris

 

[KJC]

I let it run overnight, as it was taking a very long time. Anyway: "Drive was successfully repaired." Well, we'll see. Another drive will be on order shortly in any case. Thanks.

 

[Sean Nelson]

All of what Bob suggested will only confirm what you already know. The drive is bad. As this is a backup drive, get a new drive, make a new backup and dispose of your e-waste properly.

Morris

My attitude towards any media (hard drives, SSDs, cloud storage, even tape back in the day) is that it's essential but unreliable. Therefore you always keep more than one copy of your data on different media. If one of them starts to go south, you turn to your other copy and carry on.

Life is too short to waste much time on trying to diagnose drive problems, particularly when it's likely that you'll loose faith in the drive and then decide not to use it anyway.

There can be a certain curiosity and educational aspect to understanding what went wrong, but I've found that as the miles before me turn into miles behind me I'm less interested in pursuing that and more interested in just getting on with it.

 

[KJC]

Problem not solved. Will try CrystalDiskInfo and CHKDSK later and see what happens.

Am I wrong to expect more than three years out of an external HDD that was kept at half capacity? This is the quickest I've ever had one fail.

 

[KJC]

All of what Bob suggested will only confirm what you already know. The drive is bad. As this is a backup drive, get a new drive, make a new backup and dispose of your e-waste properly.

Morris

My attitude towards any media (hard drives, SSDs, cloud storage, even tape back in the day) is that it's essential but unreliable. Therefore you always keep more than one copy of your data on different media. If one of them starts to go south, you turn to your other copy and carry on.

Life is too short to waste much time on trying to diagnose drive problems, particularly when it's likely that you'll loose faith in the drive and then decide not to use it anyway.

There can be a certain curiosity and educational aspect to understanding what went wrong, but I've found that as the miles before me turn into miles behind me I'm less interested in pursuing that and more interested in just getting on with it.

Yes, absolutely true, thanks. I actually moved this drive a little (gently) while dusting/vacuuming around the computer earlier this week. I thought it was off, but I was wrong. Wonder whether this could have caused the problem... Now I'm looking for a new 6-10 TB external drive (two actually--another backup in my office at work is due for replacement as well. )

 

[BobKnDP]

All of what Bob suggested will only confirm what you already know. The drive is bad. As this is a backup drive, get a new drive, make a new backup and dispose of your e-waste properly.

Morris

My attitude towards any media (hard drives, SSDs, cloud storage, even tape back in the day) is that it's essential but unreliable. Therefore you always keep more than one copy of your data on different media. If one of them starts to go south, you turn to your other copy and carry on.

Life is too short to waste much time on trying to diagnose drive problems, particularly when it's likely that you'll loose faith in the drive and then decide not to use it anyway.

There can be a certain curiosity and educational aspect to understanding what went wrong, but I've found that as the miles before me turn into miles behind me I'm less interested in pursuing that and more interested in just getting on with it.

Yes, absolutely true, thanks. I actually moved this drive a little (gently) while dusting/vacuuming around the computer earlier this week. I thought it was off, but I was wrong. Wonder whether this could have caused the problem... Now I'm looking for a new 6-10 TB external drive (two actually--another backup in my office at work is due for replacement as well. )

I doubt that you damaged the drive, unless you gave it a mechanical shock while it was spinning. It wasn't necessarily spinning, even if it was powered up.

I killed one drive years ago by dropping it about 0.5m (20") while it was spinning. It wasn't lightly damaged; it was unmountable.

I sometimes buy 3.5" drives and put them in separately purchased external enclosures. That may not be cheaper or more reliable than a premade external drive, but I'd know what drive is in the box. (Call me compulsive.) My largest such drive at the moment uses a 16TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro (NAS drive).

 

[Sean Nelson]

Am I wrong to expect more than three years out of an external HDD that was kept at half capacity? This is the quickest I've ever had one fail.

How full it is mostly irrelevant.

Things fail, sometimes sooner and sometimes later. My track record for hard drives is pretty good (knock wood) but if a drive failed after 3 years I'd be merely annoyed, not particularly surprised.

 

[Ken Seals]

Problem not solved. Will try CrystalDiskInfo and CHKDSK later and see what happens.

Am I wrong to expect more than three years out of an external HDD that was kept at half capacity? This is the quickest I've ever had one fail.

Over the years in this forum and others, I have seen reports of LaCie lack of reliability issues.

 

[BobKnDP]

Problem not solved. Will try CrystalDiskInfo and CHKDSK later and see what happens.

Am I wrong to expect more than three years out of an external HDD that was kept at half capacity? This is the quickest I've ever had one fail.

Over the years in this forum and others, I have seen reports of LaCie lack of reliability issues.

In case someone doesn't know, Lacie does not manufacture hard drives. The internal drives are obtained from drive manufacturers, and mounted in the Lacie enclosures.

I wonder whether Lacie externals drives are less reliable than the ones sold by the drive makers (WD, Seagate)?

(I may not have purchased a Lacie drive since I bought a 1GB SCSI external for a Mac back in the early 90s. It didn't fail during the years that I used it.)

 

[Simon Garrett]

All of what Bob suggested will only confirm what you already know. The drive is bad. As this is a backup drive, get a new drive, make a new backup and dispose of your e-waste properly.

Morris

My attitude towards any media (hard drives, SSDs, cloud storage, even tape back in the day) is that it's essential but unreliable. Therefore you always keep more than one copy of your data on different media. If one of them starts to go south, you turn to your other copy and carry on.

Life is too short to waste much time on trying to diagnose drive problems, particularly when it's likely that you'll loose faith in the drive and then decide not to use it anyway.

There can be a certain curiosity and educational aspect to understanding what went wrong, but I've found that as the miles before me turn into miles behind me I'm less interested in pursuing that and more interested in just getting on with it.

As you say, multiple backup is preferable. Imagine the worst case where something nasty damages the original and the copy during a backup. Ideally make it automatic, but at least have a simple routine that's hard to forget and hard to get wrong. HDDs are not expensive, no reason not to have multiple backups. If they even hint at trouble, replace them straight away.

 

[Sean Nelson]

I wonder whether Lacie externals drives are less reliable than the ones sold by the drive makers (WD, Seagate)?

I bought a couple of Lacie drives for my girlfriend so she could offload photos from her phone. I bought them specifically because it was the one drive I could find that's powered via the USB-C connector, so you don't need anything fancy in terms of power to use it with a phone - just plug it in.

It may be that some folks don't realize that it's a hard drive - aside from the (abysmal) performance it looks and operates pretty much like a giant flash drive. I can imagine that this might encourage people to treat it a little more cavalierly than is advisable for a hard drive.

I'm not saying that this is what happened to the OP, but if Lacie drives have a general reputation for poor longevity it seems like it could be a factor.

 

[Chris Noble]

Chkdsk is run from a Windows command prompt. To check a drive with drive letter D, the syntax is:

chkdsk D: /F /R

This tells the operating system to repair broken files if it can and mark the disk's corrupt sectors as unuseable.

/f fixes logical errors; /r fixes physical errors (scans all sectors on the disk).

/r includes /f, so you don't need to list both.

Restart before you run this command as it will need to lock the disk. /r takes up to 1 hr per TB.

Back up the drive first as /r removes defective sectors (used or not) from the available-sector table. /f just fixes incorrect file-location pointers and runs quickly.

 

[Joep van Steen]

Chkdsk is run from a Windows command prompt. To check a drive with drive letter D, the syntax is:

chkdsk D: /F /R

This tells the operating system to repair broken files if it can and mark the disk's corrupt sectors as unuseable.

/f fixes logical errors; /r fixes physical errors (scans all sectors on the disk).

You can not fix physical issues using software. At best you can hide/avoid them.

Back up the drive first as /r removes defective sectors (used or not) from the available-sector table.

clusters.

/f just fixes incorrect file-location pointers and runs quickly.

Can run for hours depending on how messed up file system / full drive is.

 

[Sean Nelson]

.

clusters.

pedantic

;-)

 

[Ellinor William]

The symptoms you're experiencing with your LaCie external drives are indications of potential issues with the drive itself or the data stored on it. Given the symptoms you've described, it's possible that the drive may have developed hardware issues or bad sectors over time.

You can use the built-in Windows utility called "Check Disk" (chkdsk) to scan and repair any file system errors on the external drive. Open a Command Prompt with administrator privileges and run the following command: chkdsk /f X: Replace "X:" with the drive letter assigned to your LaCie drive. You can also opt for recovery software to ensure data safety.

 

[Joep van Steen]

The symptoms you're experiencing with your LaCie external drives are indications of potential issues with the drive itself or the data stored on it. Given the symptoms you've described, it's possible that the drive may have developed hardware issues or bad sectors over time.

You can use the built-in Windows utility called "Check Disk" (chkdsk) to scan and repair any file system errors on the external drive. Open a Command Prompt with administrator privileges and run the following command: chkdsk /f X: Replace "X:" with the drive letter assigned to your LaCie drive. You can also opt for recovery software to ensure data safety.

Thank you, ChatGPT.