Question USB disk problems (one disk, 2 PCs), suggestions or tips?

[Dazzer1234]

Hi folks,

I have the following problem:

I'm a sound engineer and i need to work on two different PC systems (one at my studio, one at home).

I keep all my work on an external USB hard disk that travels with me from home to work.

At irregular intervals (say, once every 3 months), i'll will arrive home, plug in my disk and find any files that i was working that day are unreadable, and if i try to open them, they dissapear from the disk.

I always do a back-up before i leave my studio, so it's not a disaster, but it means i don't have access to those projects until I'm back at my studio the next day, which is annoying, because sometimes i'm working with deadline projects and need access at home.

One thing i found that made these annoying incidents less common was to make sure i always plug the USB disk into a different USB socket on my PC from the last time.

Sooooooooo.......my question to any hard disk ninjas or wizards reading this is:

Does anyone have any suggestions for tricks, applications or other workflows that could help me avoid this problem?

And does anyone have any idea what might cause these issues?

Some extra information:

I never dismount my disk, i always fully shut down the PC before unplugging the disk.

Cloud storage won't help because my project files are big (15-20 gig) so i don't have time to upload to the cloud at the end of each work day.

Thanks in advance!

 

[rgd1101]

sound like it didn't finish writing before shut down.

 

[Dazzer1234]

I don't think that's it, it effects all projects worked on that day, some hours before the PC was shut down.

What it seems like is that the home computer still thinks that the list of files and folders should be the same as when it last saw the disk, and anything that is new or changed appears corrupted.
It was this suspicion that led me to always use a different port so that the PC would "look" again at the disk each time, and this did indeed cut down on these incidents, but not entirely.