Problems with external hard drives

[Risorgimento]

Mavericks is the name given by Apple to the latest version of its OS (operating system). If you don't have a Mac then my post 29 is not relevant.

[ChrisBennell]

Regarding the general question about external hard drives - I also use a number of these for backup, 2 WD and 1 Seagate - all came with external power-supplies. This week the Seagate 2TB drive failed (or so I thought) - it was just making clicking sounds. Today I thought I'd try a different power supply from one of the other drives, and it unexpectedly came to life again! It's not always easy to track down these problems.

As a general point, it is possible to buy ordinary PC internal drives (3.5 inch SATA usually) and add a drive enclosure for about £25 from Maplin. This comes with its own power supply, then you can install the drive inside that; then use it as an ordinary external drive - and swap the disk later if need be.

[Risorgimento]

Regarding the general question about external hard drives - I also use a number of these for backup, 2 WD and 1 Seagate - all came with external power-supplies. This week the Seagate 2TB drive failed (or so I thought) - it was just making clicking sounds. Today I thought I'd try a different power supply from one of the other drives, and it unexpectedly came to life again! It's not always easy to track down these problems.

As a general point, it is possible to buy ordinary PC internal drives (3.5 inch SATA usually) and add a drive enclosure for about £25 from Maplin. This comes with its own power supply, then you can install the drive inside that; then use it as an ordinary external drive - and swap the disk later if need be.

One thing you need to bear in mind going down the 'DIY' route is that if, say, in a few years time you want to replace the drive, you may well find that the replacement drive has a higher performance (especially in terms of seek rate) but this comes at a price. Namely, places a higher current demand on the power supply. This also might explain why some folk are having problems with some drives but not others when they connect to an unpowered hub.

I got caught out by this when I bought a drive to replace the one in my Apple Time Capsule which was failing. The newer drive needed more power than was available and so I had to go down the DIY route and buy an external caddy with a beefier power supply.

[Keraulophone]

May I ask what backup (to hard drive) software people here are using?

I was about to buy a WD MyBook HDD that comes with Acronis True Image WD Edition, but many reviews on Amazon of the full version of this software give it just 1*. Which? recommends Norton Ghost 15. I have tried the software incorporated into Windows 7, but find it to be slow and lacking in features, e.g. it can't do incremental backups, changing only those files which have been added since the last full backup.

[Risorgimento]

May I ask what backup (to hard drive) software people here are using?

I was about to buy a WD MyBook HDD that comes with Acronis True Image WD Edition, but many reviews on Amazon of the full version of this software give it just 1*. Which? recommends Norton Ghost 15. I have tried the software incorporated into Windows 7, but find it to be slow and lacking in features, e.g. it can't do incremental backups, changing only those files which have been added since the last full backup.

I can't help re Windows but on my Mac I use Time Machine and also the excellent SuperDuper which provides me with a bootable copy on an external drive.

[johnb]

May I ask what backup (to hard drive) software people here are using?

I was about to buy a WD MyBook HDD that comes with Acronis True Image WD Edition, but many reviews on Amazon of the full version of this software give it just 1*. Which? recommends Norton Ghost 15. I have tried the software incorporated into Windows 7, but find it to be slow and lacking in features, e.g. it can't do incremental backups, changing only those files which have been added since the last full backup.

I've just checked the Which website and they give both software packages 5 stars and rate them as 88% and 87% for Ghost 15 and Acronis 2012 respectively (Acronis True Image Home 2012 was the last version they reviewed).

Both are long established products. Some people prefer one to the other.

My main "system" backup software is Acronis True Image Home (presumably the WD edition is a cut down version). I've used True Image to restore my "system" partition on a number of occasions and it has never let me down. Because I only use it on my "system" partition I do periodic full backups, not incremental backups.

I should explain that my hard drive is partitioned into a "system" partition (containing the operating system, programmes, etc) and a "data" partition (containing all my data files, including Outlook files). This means that I only need to backup my system partition when new software is installed, etc. It also means that I can restore my system partition without affecting any of my data. At the moment I periodically mirror my data partition to an external HDD (though if my data was crucial I would also be doing incremental back ups of my data partition on a daily basis).

In the past I have also used Norton Ghost but moved to Acronis some years ago.

I have no idea how the "WD Edition" differs from the full "Acronis True Image Home" but I am cautious about relying on the freebie software that is bundled with HDDs and would upgrade it to the full version (the upgrade price is £24).

[Keraulophone]

Thank you for that useful information.

I'll probably just get a 'plain' HDD and add the full Acronis software.

[ChrisBennell]

Interesting that JohnB has had a good experience with Acronis. I used all the versions (Acronis True Image from version 8 through to 12, and found it got progressively more complex and unreliable. Eventually I abandoned it, but even uninstalling it was not a straight-forward, process - and if I remember correctly involved hacking the registry. In fact I simply disabled all the functions and left it installed. There is an Acronis forum which worth looking at for advice and guidance.

See https://forum.acronis.com/

[johnb]

Chris,

After looking at the forum and doing a quick google I see what you mean. It is always tricky evaluating these reports as it is inevitable that it is the people who have experienced problems who post on forums. I only use True Image 2012 in the most basic way (doing single full backups/restores) on a bog standard W7 system and ignore/bypass everything else.

My experience has been OK but that shouldn't be taken as a recommendation.

[Lordgeous]

I can't help re Windows but on my Mac I use Time Machine and also the excellent SuperDuper which provides me with a bootable copy on an external drive.

Me too. Super Duper is, well... Super!

[ChrisBennell]

Chris,

After looking at the forum and doing a quick google I see what you mean. It is always tricky evaluating these reports as it is inevitable that it is the people who have experienced problems who post on forums. I only use True Image 2012 in the most basic way (doing single full backups/restores) on a bog standard W7 system and ignore/bypass everything else.

My experience has been OK but that shouldn't be taken as a recommendation.

Thanks for that. I was using full partition backups weekly, with one full followed by 5 incrementals. After a while, Acronis would not recognise previous backup files or would report them as corrupted, despite having apparently worked at the time of the original backup. Also when I upgraded from 11 to 12, the new system couldn't find or recognise any of my previous (6 months ) backup files - which was a bit frustrating as the entire lot were then unusable. Fortunately I never had need to attempt a recovery!! I did find that the earlier versions (8, 9, 10) were more stable.

I recognise that Acronis is still recommended in many quarters, though.

[Sydney Grew]

. . . Does anyone have any useful recommendations . . .

Two elementary procedural recommendations which I do not think have yet been mentioned in this thread:

1a) Always switch on the computer first without the external drive plugged in.
1b) When the computer is running properly and all ready to go, only then plug in the usb for the external drive.
1c) And only after that switch the external drive on at the wall.

2a) When you have finished your work, make sure you click on the little green thing at the bottom of your Windows screen, which is labelled "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media", and then click on the line labelled "Eject Media" plus the drive label. This point is vital. If you simply pull out the usb plug without having gone through that rigmarole then the data on your external drive will certainly be destroyed sooner or later.
2b) After doing the "Eject Media" described in 2a, only then switch the external drive off at the wall.

[Bryn]

Most of my external hard drives are USB powered. How will I survive without steps 1c and 2b? Worse still, I usually leave one external drive plugged into a USB slot, sometimes I even leave two plugged in, so I am tightrope walking my way to disaster re. 1b and the first sentence of 1c.

[Frances_iom]

actually SG is giving good advice - power requirements surge at startup as harddrives are powered up - obviously if you have USB sticks then no additional load and you can ignore it but his point re safely remove is essential as not only may some writes not yet have finished as most O/S's buffer output but many forms of solid state memory (eg USB sticks and especially SD cards) can be permanently made unreadable by a write operation prematurely terminated by loss of power (eg it is the most common cause of failure in playing with RaspberryPi modules)

[Bryn]

Please note, I specifically avoided mention of the indeed essential need to use the 'safely remove' function if unplugging a USB external hard drive (or other memory device).

The power demands issue is worth considering. However, I don't leave USB devices plugged in when shutting down from battery power, only when running from external PSU. Also, I would suggest that when using high capacity USB powered external hard drives (say, over 1TB) it is wise to not plug an additional USB powered external hard drive in. On the very few occasions I have tried this, the high capacity drive has really struggled, clicking away madly. In fact, it might be better to regard 1TB as a sensible maximum size for an USB powered external hard drive. Apart from anything else, there is somewhat less to lose when the drive eventually fails.