Question Problem with folders becoming inaccessible on external HDD ?

[Pimpom]

I finished copying the contents of my desktop HDD to an external drive a couple of days ago. The external drive is 5 years old but has seen only light, very occasional use until now. I tested it with HDTune before the backup process, with excellent results.

The drive started misbehaving towards the end of the copying process (roughly the last 100GB). Some folders - only some, and not always the same ones - became inaccessible unless I restarted the computer after reinserting the USB cable. Twice I had to scan the disk with checkdisk. I don't have a spare micro-B cable and there's no way I can buy one due to a strict lockdown.

To minimize stress on the external drive, I stretched out the copy process over three days, making sure the temp stayed well below 40ºC (monitored with HWinfo). It now has 850GB of data out of 931GB available space, comprised of about half a million files and thousands of folders.

Is there a possibility that the problem is caused by the large number of index entries rather than by a defect in the drive or the cable?

 

[Pimpom]

It seems mods changed the title of my thread. Frankly, I don't know why. The problem is not in the copying process. Instead, it occurred with folders that were already copied correctly, checked and readable. Maybe I didn't describe it clearly enough. The problem is that some folders, and not always the same ones, are visible but cannot be opened in a seemingly random manner until the drive is disconnected and re-connected. Sometimes it needs a scan for errors.

As I said, the drive - and the cable - are five years old but rarely used. I checked it thoroughly before using it this time.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Sorry, that was me. I've altered it again which I hope better explains the issue.

 

[Pimpom]

Update: It happened again two days ago. The main folder where I placed the bulk of my backup with thousands of sub-folders became inaccessible again. I left the drive disconnected and connected it again earlier today.

The main folder was still inaccessible, so I started Chkdsk. On each of the two previous occasions, the scan completed in a few minutes. This time, the first stage completed in about 15 minutes but the second stage is still doing its thing after ~7 hours.

The number in the message "**** file SDs/SIDs processed." is progressing at roughly 10-20 per second and has passed the 400k mark.