Problems with hard disk in external drive. Is it the disk or the housing?

[halfbeing]

A few months ago a hard drive appeared to fail on me. This was a surprise because I only used the drive to do backups. Being sure that it was dead, I took it to a recycling point. A few weeks letter I got an email from somebody who had bought the hard drive in a market. It was working and he was asking me if I needed my data back. Meanwhile I put another drive in the same USB housing (Icy Box) and used that again only for backup. Today the drive appeared to fail on me, but I moved it to another USB case and now it appears to be working. Or at least it's got through 1% of a chkdsk scan without complaining, but I'm not sure I've got 35 hours to wait for it to finish the scan.

So my question is: Can I be confident that the electronics in the housing are to blame for my apparent disk problems, or could it be that I really have been unlucky with my disks and that I am currently on my second dud which I will still need to replace?

EDIT: Since posting, chkdsk seems to have got stuck, still at 1%, with no noise or vibration coming from the disk in the replacement housing. I guess that may answer my question...

ANOTHER EDIT: I just did a ctrl-C in the console running chkdsk and now it seems to be scanning again, with no error messages so far. Obviously I can't be around to nudge chkdsk on every half hour until midnight tomorrow though.

 

[alexoiu]

Usually, the adapters in the enclosure. Low quality components, or so...

 

[halfbeing]

Usually, the adapters in the enclosure. Low quality components, or so...

That's good to know. Thank you.

So I guess that means that, while it wouldn't hurt to get second backup drive to be on the safe side, I don't need to panic about not having a reliable backup available now.

 

[alexoiu]

No problem. Yes, you should not worry about the disk reliability.

 

[ArtPog]

1. First of all, with respect to your present HDD that you're using (or plan to use) for backups, you really should test the drive with a HDD diagnostic program (preferably one usually obtainable from the disk's manufacturer, but any HDD diagnostic program of your choice). It would be best if you could internally-connect the HDD in your system. You haven't indicated whether you're working with a desktop PC so I don't know if that's a viable option. In any event you can (usually) test the drive when it's connected as a USB device. BUT ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, YOU SHOULD TEST IT.

Assuming the drive checks out OK, you might want to check out another USB enclosure to house the HDD unless you're absolutely satisfied the Icy Dock enclosure is absolutely non-defective.

2. And yes...you should be concerned about a drive's reliability. Perhaps "worried" is too strong a word but "concerned" is not. Understand this. Drives fail. They all fail at one time or another. I don't know when that will be...you don't know when that will be...BUT THEY WILL ALL FAIL.

3. So that means one important thing for you to learn as a PC user. It is crucial for you to COMPREHENSIVELY back up your system from time-to-time so that you will have at hand a reasonably up-to-date backup of your system. So if & when that dreaded day arrives when your boot drive has failed or the system becomes hopelessly corrupted because of one reason or another, you will have the means to return your system to a bootable, functional system reasonably easily and quickly. You can achieve this "goal" through the routine use of a disk-cloning program or use some other backup strategy of your preference. But one way or another...do it.

 

[RolandJS]

ArtPog's words are golden apples on a silver platter. Years ago, Windows 3.1-3.11, every time I did not have a backup or the backup was old -- something happened. No restore, time to reload everything. Since WFW 3.11 -- regular backups onto external media, done twice.