Question The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR1. Help please

[thisdoesntsmellok]

Hello - I am wondering if anyone could possibly help me resolve an issue I am having.

I have had a rig for about almost 2 weeks now. I have a WD black (4tb) external drive for backups and if I wanna move from my rig to my tv to play movies (sometimes I do, other times I just stream it. Whatever)
But since I built the rig I have had the following error at random points. It is running on USB 3.1.
I have updated drivers (plus bios firmware), as well as moving the external drive to a different USB (just tried now and got the error maybe 40 minutes after inserting it.)
I have also removed it, from the USB and placed a mouse in it and it's not being weird (unsure if mice and drives work differently in USB - need to check)
Am I looking at potentially a [language redacted] mobo? The drive is new - as well as the USB cable so I wouldn't have thought it was that. I have also tried another external drive and got the same issue.
At the same time I moved about 250gb from a NVME to the WD black and that took about two hours - which seems really weird. I used the cable that was supplied and also another cable I had around and I still performed the same.
I have also ran both a surface and deep scan and found no errors on the disks. Which might point to a motherboard issue. But I don't know - any other test or idea would be good as I have ran out of odeas to try

 

[Bob.B]

Hello - I am wondering if anyone could possibly help me resolve an issue I am having.

I have had a rig for about almost 2 weeks now. I have a WD black (4tb) external drive for backups and if I wanna move from my rig to my tv to play movies (sometimes I do, other times I just stream it. Whatever)
But since I built the rig I have had the following error at random points. It is running on USB 3.1.
I have updated drivers (plus bios firmware), as well as moving the external drive to a different USB (just tried now and got the error maybe 40 minutes after inserting it.)
I have also removed it, from the USB and placed a mouse in it and it's not being weird (unsure if mice and drives work differently in USB - need to check)
Am I looking at potentially a [language redacted] mobo? The drive is new - as well as the USB cable so I wouldn't have thought it was that. I have also tried another external drive and got the same issue.
At the same time I moved about 250gb from a NVME to the WD black and that took about two hours - which seems really weird. I used the cable that was supplied and also another cable I had around and I still performed the same.
I have also ran both a surface and deep scan and found no errors on the disks. Which might point to a motherboard issue. But I don't know - any other test or idea would be good as I have ran out of odeas to try

Post a link to the enclosure you are using.

 

[Ralston18]

Yes: post the requested link.

Does the external enclosure have its' own power source or is the enclosure limited to the host computer's USB sourced power?

 

[Misgar]

I've experience intermittent corruption when copying files over long USB 3.0 cables. I now use a 1ft (0.3m) Startech cable with my Kingston FCR-HS4 card reader when copying CF, SD and microSD files. For Crucial X6 portable SSDs with USB-C connectors, I use the very short 8in/20cm USB-C cables provided with the drives.

Check the length of the cable connecting your WD Black drive to the computer. It's probably 1ft6in (0.5m) long. If you plugged it into a front panel USB port, there's probably another 1ft6in/50cm cable inside, leading down to the motherboard. All this unnecessary cable adds capacitance which increases crosstalk and signal degradation.

Ditch the long cable and buy a good quality 1ft/50cm cable and connect the hard drive directly to the back of the computer. It makes life more difficult, but might fix your problem.

I use Free File Sync when copying folders full of files over USB 3.0. After copying, I use the 'File Content' option under 'Compare' to run a bit-by-bit comparison of the source and destination files/folders. This verification process takes just as long as copying but provides reasurance that all files are good. It can take hours. Be patient.
https://freefilesync.org/

At the same time I moved about 250gb from a NVME to the WD black and that took about two hours

When I got back from my last vacation, I copied 660GB of photos and videos from my 2TB Crucial X6 portable SSD to a hard disk in a computer, but I can't remember how long it took. I have measured the transfer rate of my 8TB WD Purple drives and they start off at 250MB/s on the outer edge, dropping to 125MB/s at the centre. I'd expect your 4TB drives to be roughly 200MB/s dropping to 100MB/s.

You don't say how big the files are that you're copying. I find things go much faster when copying large (12GB) GoPro videos, than thousands of 50MB RAW files and 15MB JPGs. Smaller files take a lot longer to copy, as Windows has to update the MBR more often. I calculate your 250GB in 2 hours equals 35MB/s, which might be correct if you're copying tens of thousands of small files to the hard disk.

Try a few tests copying a single 5GB movie file and then 5GB of small JPGs or MP3 files. You should see a big difference. Similarly, when files are written to the innermost tracks on the hard disk, transfer rates of any file size will be halved. You have no control where the hard disk saves your (fragmented) files.

 

[thisdoesntsmellok]

Post a link to the enclosure you are using.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/sspa/click...-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

This.

 

[thisdoesntsmellok]

Yes: post the requested link.

Does the external enclosure have its' own power source or is the enclosure limited to the host computer's USB sourced power?

It's a small 2.5" wd black 4tb, Power is done via usb

 

[thisdoesntsmellok]

I've experience intermittent corruption when copying files over long USB 3.0 cables. I now use a 1ft (0.3m) Startech cable with my Kingston FCR-HS4 card reader when copying CF, SD and microSD files. For Crucial X6 portable SSDs with USB-C connectors, I use the very short 8in/20cm USB-C cables provided with the drives.

Check the length of the cable connecting your WD Black drive to the computer. It's probably 1ft6in (0.5m) long. If you plugged it into a front panel USB port, there's probably another 1ft6in/50cm cable inside, leading down to the motherboard. All this unnecessary cable adds capacitance which increases crosstalk and signal degradation.

Ditch the long cable and buy a good quality 1ft/50cm cable and connect the hard drive directly to the back of the computer. It makes life more difficult, but might fix your problem.

I use Free File Sync when copying folders full of files over USB 3.0. After copying, I use the 'File Content' option under 'Compare' to run a bit-by-bit comparison of the source and destination files/folders. This verification process takes just as long as copying but provides reasurance that all files are good. It can take hours. Be patient.
https://freefilesync.org/


When I got back from my last vacation, I copied 660GB of photos and videos from my 2TB Crucial X6 portable SSD to a hard disk in a computer, but I can't remember how long it took. I have measured the transfer rate of my 8TB WD Purple drives and they start off at 250MB/s on the outer edge, dropping to 125MB/s at the centre. I'd expect your 4TB drives to be roughly 200MB/s dropping to 100MB/s.

You don't say how big the files are that you're copying. I find things go much faster when copying large (12GB) GoPro videos, than thousands of 50MB RAW files and 15MB JPGs. Smaller files take a lot longer to copy, as Windows has to update the MBR more often. I calculate your 250GB in 2 hours equals 35MB/s, which might be correct if you're copying tens of thousands of small files to the hard disk.

Try a few tests copying a single 5GB movie file and then 5GB of small JPGs or MP3 files. You should see a big difference. Similarly, when files are written to the innermost tracks on the hard disk, transfer rates of any file size will be halved. You have no control where the hard disk saves your (fragmented) files.

I used the cabled that was supplied in all USB slots that were available. All intermittent disconnects.

 

[Ralston18]

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance during file copying.

Watch for what changes when performance falters.

Use only one tool at a time.

= = = =

If possible, as a matter of elimination, connect the external drive to an independently powered USB hub and connect the independently powered hub to the host computer.

Observe performance if and as necessary.

 

[Bob.B]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/sspa/click?ie=UTF8&spc=MToyNzgwODQ2MDc0NDAwMDUwOjE3Mjc3OTQ1NzY6c3BfYXRmOjMwMDM1MzAxMjY1NTQzMjo6MDo6&url=/WD_BLACK-Portable-External-Console-Playstation/dp/B07VNTFK87/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=172S8XL3ZG6B1&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.hm7crHCp7dzgEX384z8CNSwmcSFfbzhh2PZ5SlT_tx_xvpdMzFqwi8zRo3VBwQbLTb2LGGxO-hFKvZZ2hl7ofwlP6odWKK_Ot_CdYtG_kvIHDkxhcE67W2qcH90B9lBMGkq2T9RIFh0ERmxIXuzq5ezhe4n6uOH2BCqORtOrdAhf0PhdDMj7VwG5eSYAQkn8O6PHgz7Qqun8uy9NoQ08dkTDSa8iRkB-Oz6IFADJgVc.cXYbqT_HL3dRuT9JOealFmukdpLswKrKGMLK5jculvc&dib_tag=se&keywords=wd+black+4tb&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1727794576&sprefix=wd+black+4tb%2Caps%2C104&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

This.

Look in the power options and disable usb selective suspend.....test.

Look in device manager for usb controllers go through each item and disable allow to power off.....test.

 

[thisdoesntsmellok]

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance during file copying.

Watch for what changes when performance falters.

Use only one tool at a time.

= = = =

If possible, as a matter of elimination, connect the external drive to an independently powered USB hub and connect the independently powered hub to the host computer.

Observe performance if and as necessary.

Figured it out - it's the motherboard, specifically the part that controls USB ports. Used another laptop (albeit and less spec model) to install some apps onto the drive and it was fine and actually ran faster.
Plus it didn't DC from the laptop on load.
Looks like I need to get a replacement from Amazon,