Anyone experience problems with USB hard drives?
 

I'm having a strange problem on my Windows 7 64bit system with one particular USB hard drive. I have been using it for my backups on a regular basis for the past year and recently it started giving me problems.

When I connect it to the system, after a variable amount of time it will stop responding and generate a "The driver detected a controller error" error in the system log. After which I get a whole bunch of ntfs warnings of "The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur." because it can no longer read or write to the ntfs drive.

This only seems to happen with this one drive, my other USB based devices are all working fine. I have tried different ports with the same result. If I plug the usb HD into another Windows 7 64bit machine, it works fine, will do a completed checkdisk /r to search the entire drive for bad sectors and comes up with no errors. So the drive works fine on another system.

Anyone seen this before? I even tried uninstalling all my USB drivers from Windows, deleting the infcache.1 USB driver cache and starting over, but that did not fix the problem either. The system is running cool and stable (both CPU and memory) so not sure what is going on.

Jeff.

[QUOTE=Jeff Gilchrist;260604]I'm having a strange problem on my Windows 7 64bit system with one particular USB hard drive. I have been using it for my backups on a regular basis for the past year and recently it started giving me problems.

When I connect it to the system, after a variable amount of time it will stop responding and generate a "The driver detected a controller error" error in the system log. After which I get a whole bunch of ntfs warnings of "The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur." because it can no longer read or write to the ntfs drive.

This only seems to happen with this one drive, my other USB based devices are all working fine. I have tried different ports with the same result. If I plug the usb HD into another Windows 7 64bit machine, it works fine, will do a completed checkdisk /r to search the entire drive for bad sectors and comes up with no errors. So the drive works fine on another system.

Anyone seen this before? I even tried uninstalling all my USB drivers from Windows, deleting the infcache.1 USB driver cache and starting over, but that did not fix the problem either. The system is running cool and stable (both CPU and memory) so not sure what is going on.

Jeff.[/QUOTE]Not seen it but personally I'd retire it from anything important like backups.

You could try reformating the drive to see if that helps.

Paul

Do you have another OS on that pc as well? Maybe try a ubuntu livecd?

[QUOTE=henryzz;260631]Do you have another OS on that pc as well? Maybe try a ubuntu livecd?[/QUOTE]

I was thinking about that but just haven't had the time, that would better explain if it was the OS/driver or the hardware itself. I guess just doing a dd of zeros to fill up the drive's free space would be a good test. I'm not sure what kind of errors/reports I would see from Linux if it experienced the same problem. An error from DD saying it can't write perhaps?

Is this USB external drive easily taken apart in order to remove the drive? Is it a modern SATA 2.5" type drive?

If you have access to a PC with a spare power and data cable (or boot up a live linux distro and unplug your main hard drive), you can at the very least plug the drive in and check the SMART status (this is helpful but may not be sufficient in diagnosing your problem) using [URL="http://hddguru.com/software/2006.01.22-HDDScan/"]HDD Scan[/URL] or like the previous poster had stated, by using a linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu's Disk Utility).

Via Windows, you are limited to a disk read check only via CHKDSK and only on those areas of the drive where data has been allocated (not sure if this is still used or the case in Windows Vista or 7, I refuse to downgrade from XP to either of those). Even then, you will not get a complete read verification if the physical block size does not equal the allocated block size (e.g. this drive is not an AF but legacy 512-byte and drive is formatted NTFS with virtual 4096 byte sector addressing - I can get into greater detail if anyone would like).

If you want to spend the money (or not >c| ), you can always get a copy of SpinRite. This is better if you have several hard drives and most are out of warranty and you want to continue using them for purposes other than data or anything that requires a high level of confidence for read/write access).

[U]Bottom line[/U], if it is not worth the effort and if this is needed for back up, spend the $50+ and get a new 500 GB+ 5400 RPM drive or a 250 GB+ 7200 RPM drive. Better yet, I would strongly recommend against using 2.5" drives for backups (high failure rate, sensitive to external shocks - I have half a dozen 2.5" hard drives in my possession that are in terrible condition to failing condition from data recovery for clients - I disassemble and destroy them after recovery). Get a home media player and use the bum drive(s) for that. I have two dedicated to my Patriot Box office with rarely a read problem.

It is not easily taken apart but it is a 2.5" drive. Since it is used for backups I don't really want to take the chance so I think it is time to upgrade to a nice NAS system so I can easily do backups over the network and access all of my media from multiple sources as well.

Thanks for the info, warranty is done for the hardware as well so not really worth pursuing any more I think.

[QUOTE=imwithid;261554]
Better yet, I would strongly recommend against using 2.5" drives for backups (high failure rate, sensitive to external shocks - I have half a dozen 2.5" hard drives in my possession that are in terrible condition to failing condition from data recovery for clients - I disassemble and destroy them after recovery). Get a home media player and use the bum drive(s) for that. I have two dedicated to my Patriot Box office with rarely a read problem.[/QUOTE]

If an arbor press came along and made sure the disks weren't anywhere close to flat, how much difficulty is involved in the data recovery?

And if I have dead drive electronics only, what are the possibilities?

[QUOTE=Christenson;261579]If an arbor press came along and made sure the disks weren't anywhere close to flat, how much difficulty is involved in the data recovery?

And if I have dead drive electronics only, what are the possibilities?[/QUOTE]

I'm uncertain as to whether you're joking or not.

Just in case, if such a tool were to land on a drive, that would depend on many things. If the force is sufficient in a small surface area to cause enough bending force to the point where the flexibility of one or more of the platters reaches failure, the platter will shatter into hundreds of pieces. Most modern platters are not made of a solid alloy but of a thin semiconductor layer coating a glass like substrate (AFAIK).

If the platters are still fully intact (partial damage such as a hole from a bullet or drill will leave the drive imbalanced and such repair work is only for the best of professionals), it is still possible. One would have to get a similar drive to the one that is damaged (as close as possible -- manufacturer, model, date of manufacture -- but even then, there are no guarantees). Then in a dust free enclosure (one can make their own if one is daring, patient and careful enough), disassemble the broken or damaged drive as carefully as possible (this can be very tricky with some drive manufacturers, the head stack is the most difficult to remove, I find) as well as the new one. Replace the platters from the broken drive into the new one, close it up and hope that all works well.

This is very much abridged and I generally do not get into such work as the success rate is low and those that I have dealt with generally do not have data that is valuable enough to merit such an expense. I'll submit my limitations generally as a measure of caution.

Having the electronics alone is like having a motherboard without a hard drive. There is next to no data stored (unless its a hybrid or SSD which are so new that data recovery is next to impossible depending on the severity of failure) with the exception of the P-list table.

If you mean that the electronics are suspected to be the problem, you can purchase an appropriate PCB for that hard drive and potentially get it working but again, there is no guarantee that it will work or work well.

I was serious about the arbor press...as an intended method of destroying the disk and the ability to read any data from it...but the last set of platters I fooled with bent significantly, like in a 90 degree curve and did not shatter at room temperature. I had 2 or three out of a dozen old, dead hard drives that I couldn't disassemble and beadblast the platters.

And yes, separating the heads from the platters is the complicated part....but as I was destroying, I didn't have to care, and left tool marks and bends all over the place.

I also have a newer dead laptop hard drive with some personal data that might be worth recovering, (but no such attack on the platters) and was wondering if there was much hope. These aren't half solid-state types where pullling data out of a solid-state type is going to involve a very delicate grinding job to image the bits...

With respect to your dead drive, it depends on what dead means.

If it spins up and the motor speed is good and constant without abnormal noise, there is some remote hope. From there, you have to hope that the PCB is functioning and the read capability of the heads is good and not completely damaged. A basic SMART test will at the very least give you an indication of the problem using the link I mentioned above or if you use linux, using smartmontools (there is a GUI add on to make this utility easier to use). If the drive cannot be detected by any means, you may be left with a few options.

The first is to attempt using a diagnostic tool specifically designed for your drive from the manufacturer (e.g. SeaTools for Seagate or Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tools for WD). I find that this usually doesn't work and the tools are too simple to give you the information you need. Also, the repairs they attempt often fail.

Failing that, you can use SpinRite. This program will not, nor will any other program, fix a drive that has several (hundreds, thousands, millions) bad sectors, damaged electronics (PCB), etc. It can attempt to read sectors multiple times (up to 2,000 times) and attempt to recover the data statistically and move them to sectors that are suitable so that recovery can be attempted. This is, arguably, the best piece of data diagnostics software out there. It could take anywhere from about a day to months (one drive I had was estimated to complete in eight months, I had to give up after a month).

After using SpinRite, you can use dd_rescue and use it to clone the drive. There are many ways of using this program to clone the drive (forward order, reverse, adjusting block size, etc.). It is an old, basic program but powerful. Use the log option. It will save you time and, potentially, your data if the drive is near death if you have to start over at the beginning or if the drive seizes during the copy process.

Finally, failing all of the above, if the data is so priceless and valuable to you and you have the time, patience, experience and care, you can find the same functioning drive (hopefully, the same model, firmware, etc.) and attempt to re-assemble the old drive's platters into the new as I had mentioned in the previous post. If it's the PCB, it's very easy to switch from one to the other.

I'm not sure which state my dead drive is in...and I'd need TWO copies of the old model, one to practice on, one to do for real...thanks....was curious, in this era of dirt cheap hard drives, why a program like spinrite wouldn't make a copy of what it found onto a known good drive...as I have very little interest in keeping the hard drive proper, only some of the data on it...