I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years: one day I plug it in and Windows
tells me it needs formatting. I tried it on another PC, same thing.
I did a quick NTFS format, which took just a few seconds. Then I loaded
stuff onto it. It held ok, and looked perfect. But I was a little
anxious that maybe I should have done a full format; checked every sector.
It's been formatting now for 2 hours on a 16-core laptop, and it's only
half complete.
4 hours for 2TB; 20 for 10TB; sheesh!
A couple of questions.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
What causes a HD to suddenly fail? I suspect the flimsy USB plug-hole
they have. I think they call it Micro USB.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
A couple of questions.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
What causes a HD to suddenly fail? I suspect the flimsy USB plug-hole
they have. I think they call it Micro USB.
Ed Cryer wrote:
[snip]
A couple of questions.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
What causes a HD to suddenly fail? I suspect the flimsy USB plug-hole
they have. I think they call it Micro USB.
The full format probably tries to write to each logical sector, which is
why it takes so much time.
If you have the time (about a week), it may be better to use a dedicated
disk tester program - I think Seagate offer one. This could give useful information about reliability and read re-tries, so might give you
confidence in the device.
The Micro USB connectors are a disaster. I suspect they are only
designed for less than 100 mating cycles, regardless of what the specifications say! Much better to have the disc built into a NAS
housing using an Ethernet - RJ45 - connector. This also moves the power
to either a separate wall wart or an integrated supply fed from the mains.
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years: one day I plug it in and Windows
tells me it needs formatting. I tried it on another PC, same thing.
I did a quick NTFS format, which took just a few seconds. Then I loaded
stuff onto it. It held ok, and looked perfect. But I was a little
anxious that maybe I should have done a full format; checked every sector.
It's been formatting now for 2 hours on a 16-core laptop, and it's only
half complete.
4 hours for 2TB; 20 for 10TB; sheesh!
A couple of questions.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
What causes a HD to suddenly fail? I suspect the flimsy USB plug-hole
they have. I think they call it Micro USB.
Ed Cryer wrote:also moves the power to either a separate wall wart or an integrated supply fed from the mains.
[snip]
A couple of questions.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
What causes a HD to suddenly fail? I suspect the flimsy USB plug-hole they have. I think they call it Micro USB.
The full format probably tries to write to each logical sector, which is why it takes so much time.
If you have the time (about a week), it may be better to use a dedicated disk tester program - I think Seagate offer one. This could give useful information about reliability and read re-tries, so might give you confidence in the device.
The Micro USB connectors are a disaster. I suspect they are only designed for less than 100 mating cycles, regardless of what the specifications say! Much better to have the disc built into a NAS housing using an Ethernet - RJ45 - connector. This
On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 11:35:00 +0000, Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk>I suggest using a low cost USB to HDD docking station to eliminate
wrote:
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years:
If it's really seven years old I'd really think about replacing it.
They don't last for ever.
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years:
On 2024-12-06 12:23, Graham J wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:
[snip]
A couple of questions.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
What causes a HD to suddenly fail? I suspect the flimsy USB plug-hole
they have. I think they call it Micro USB.
The full format probably tries to write to each logical sector, which is why it takes so much time.
If you have the time (about a week), it may be better to use a dedicated disk tester program - I think Seagate offer one. This could give useful information about reliability and read re-tries, so might give you confidence in the device.
The Micro USB connectors are a disaster. I suspect they are only
designed for less than 100 mating cycles, regardless of what the specifications say! Much better to have the disc built into a NAS
housing using an Ethernet - RJ45 - connector. This also moves the power
to either a separate wall wart or an integrated supply fed from the mains.
Yes, +1 for a NAS.
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years: one day I plug it in and Windows
tells me it needs formatting. I tried it on another PC, same thing.
I did a quick NTFS format, which took just a few seconds. Then I loaded
stuff onto it. It held ok, and looked perfect. But I was a little
anxious that maybe I should have done a full format; checked every sector.
It's been formatting now for 2 hours on a 16-core laptop, and it's only
half complete.
4 hours for 2TB; 20 for 10TB; sheesh!
A couple of questions.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
What causes a HD to suddenly fail? I suspect the flimsy USB plug-hole
they have. I think they call it Micro USB.
Ed
Ed Cryer wrote:
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years: one day I plug it in and Windows
tells me it needs formatting. I tried it on another PC, same thing.
I did a quick NTFS format, which took just a few seconds. Then I
loaded stuff onto it. It held ok, and looked perfect. But I was a
little anxious that maybe I should have done a full format; checked
every sector.
It's been formatting now for 2 hours on a 16-core laptop, and it's
only half complete.
4 hours for 2TB; 20 for 10TB; sheesh!
A couple of questions.
Am I simply wasting time with a full format? Gaining nothing?
What causes a HD to suddenly fail? I suspect the flimsy USB plug-hole
they have. I think they call it Micro USB.
Ed
I am a "hardware" type person so one of the first things I would do
would be to remove the drive from the case and plug it into a sata cable
to my test / gamer machine. Of course that assumes that the drive has a
sata jack, unlike some external drives that I have seen that don't have
a sata jack and the USB jack is part of the drive itself.
On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 11:35:00 +0000, Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk>
wrote:
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years:
If it's really seven years old I'd really think about replacing it.
They don't last for ever.
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years:
If it's really seven years old I'd really think about replacing it.
They don't last for ever.
That depends on the power-on-hours and the
operating policies of the drive
On Fri, 12/6/2024 10:33 AM, Peter Johnson wrote:
On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 11:35:00 +0000, Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk>
wrote:
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years:
If it's really seven years old I'd really think about replacing it.
They don't last for ever.
That depends on the power-on-hours and the
operating policies of the drive (head parking,
excessively low flying height, "polish marks"
on the platter surface where the heads haven't
moved for a while).
Some modern drives, like the 20TB ones, they now
have "dither" programmed in, so when the drive is
idle, the heads do not stay on the same track for
hours on end. The heads are moved around even when
the drive has no work. In the same way the image on a
plasma TV was moved around, to prevent burn-in.
I have a drive, where the SMART indicates 55,000 power on hours.
Another poster once reported they had a drive with 70,000
hours of time on the clock. On my drive, if you bench it,
the platter has a "nearly new" rating -- very few apparent
re-allocations.
I have seen a significant reallocation count, on a drive
that had 5,000 power-on-hours. All five identical model
numbers of drive, show similar "flaky" behavior. None of the
drives have died, but the surface of the platters is obviously
seriously compromised ("rusty").
Not all drives are champs. But for a few of them, the
staff washed their hands before doing assembly :-)
You can see in my examples, that power-on-hours alone is
not the only determinant. Some of the drives I own,
are engineering failures and the staff at Seagate likely
knew every one of those shipped... was rubbish. You can also
see this in BackBlaze, where a few specific models have
terrible statistics.
All you can do, is check your SMART, check your read benchmarks,
and determine when it is time to retire a drive. The 55,000 hour
drive, is still perfectly fit for usage. No adverse SMART
indicators, good read benchmark (no dips or spikes).
It's actually pretty hard to bench drives on windows now.
I spotted some anomalous behavior, for a picture I was
going to make for Ed, so I had to bail on the mission
and toss the results. Win2K is a good OS for doing
read benchmark runs. Now, where did I leave my Win2K...
Paul
The drive is now working beautifully, but I've replaced it with a brand
new 4TB one.
I have a policy which I call "exorcising failures"; when something
breaks, replace it with something better.
However, in this case I'm dithering to just throw the old one away. It
has only 23,500 usage hours, and looks good good good.
A new theory has occurred to me. Maybe it failed because of a badly
seated cable; perhaps only partially inserted on the occasion when it
blew up.
Here's a dilemma for a nervous man. It passes all the scientific tests
for reliability, but it DID once fail.
On Fri, 12/6/2024 10:33 AM, Peter Johnson wrote:
On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 11:35:00 +0000, Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk>
wrote:
I have an external 2TB Seagate HD that just suddenly failed. I'd been
using it weekly for about 7 years:
If it's really seven years old I'd really think about replacing it.
They don't last for ever.
That depends on the power-on-hours and the
operating policies of the drive (head parking,
excessively low flying height, "polish marks"
on the platter surface where the heads haven't
moved for a while).
Some modern drives, like the 20TB ones, they now
have "dither" programmed in, so when the drive is
idle, the heads do not stay on the same track for
hours on end. The heads are moved around even when
the drive has no work. In the same way the image on a
plasma TV was moved around, to prevent burn-in.
I have a drive, where the SMART indicates 55,000 power on hours.
Another poster once reported they had a drive with 70,000
hours of time on the clock. On my drive, if you bench it,
the platter has a "nearly new" rating -- very few apparent
re-allocations.
I have seen a significant reallocation count, on a drive
that had 5,000 power-on-hours. All five identical model
numbers of drive, show similar "flaky" behavior. None of the
drives have died, but the surface of the platters is obviously
seriously compromised ("rusty").
Not all drives are champs. But for a few of them, the
staff washed their hands before doing assembly :-)
You can see in my examples, that power-on-hours alone is
not the only determinant. Some of the drives I own,
are engineering failures and the staff at Seagate likely
knew every one of those shipped... was rubbish. You can also
see this in BackBlaze, where a few specific models have
terrible statistics.
All you can do, is check your SMART, check your read benchmarks,
and determine when it is time to retire a drive. The 55,000 hour
drive, is still perfectly fit for usage. No adverse SMART
indicators, good read benchmark (no dips or spikes).
It's actually pretty hard to bench drives on windows now.
I spotted some anomalous behavior, for a picture I was
going to make for Ed, so I had to bail on the mission
and toss the results. Win2K is a good OS for doing
read benchmark runs. Now, where did I leave my Win2K...
Paul
Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:
[...]
The drive is now working beautifully, but I've replaced it with a brand
new 4TB one.
I have a policy which I call "exorcising failures"; when something
breaks, replace it with something better.
However, in this case I'm dithering to just throw the old one away. It
has only 23,500 usage hours, and looks good good good.
A new theory has occurred to me. Maybe it failed because of a badly
seated cable; perhaps only partially inserted on the occasion when it
blew up.
Here's a dilemma for a nervous man. It passes all the scientific tests
for reliability, but it DID once fail.
Are you sure the error message said it needed to be *formatted*, not
just to be *checked*?
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