Question Windows 11 is corrupting my USB External HDDs ?

[sammyblue]

Since this past weekend, my USB attached hard drives have been corrupted. I believe I noticed the issues crop up on the 24th.

I thought it was power issues -- I have tried direct to wall, SP, and battery UPS as power sources and the drives keep getting logically damaged.

I bought new drives, new DAS case, shorter usb cable. Every HDD I hook up via USB, regardless of port, eventually shows as RAW.

I tried rolling back the Windows update that was forced on me this last weekend, but I think only a partial rollback was possible.

The new drives were formatted and I used DiskGenius to transfer documents from the corrupted existing drives to one(not both) of the new drives. This completed without issue.

At some point while I was away from the computer, both new drives were trashed and showed as RAW. I reformatted them and powered down for the night. This morning after boot, the one with the recovered files was RAW again.

All data on the drive has been scanned by AV before. All data on the drive has existed for months to years as an archive.

The only changes that took place before running the USB drives without issue for a year+ are:

1. I moved into a different room in the house around 1.5 to 2 weeks before this started happening,

2. The Windows 11 Update that was forced sometime between Friday and Sunday.

 

[sammyblue]

Sorry if this has already been suggested but have you done a firmware update for your motherboard and also checked if there are new drivers for your USB Devices? I know it's kind of a long shot but in the past I have had similar issues and a motherboard BIOS update sometimes fixes it.

Negative on the motherboard, and the USB drivers are listed as the latest.

 

[sammyblue]

@sammyblue

Not sure why there are no entries prior to the 28th: Was there some update or reinstall?

Yes, I had to repair windows with the "repair using windows update" function on the evening of the 27th.

View and post the technical details from that failed Windows Update.

Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80073D02: 9WZDNCRFJBMP-MICROSOFT.WINDOWSSTORE.

And Windows logs can be cleared by apps, tools (e.g., Event Viewer), or users via code.

Hopefully there would be some confirmation request presented before the logs would be cleared. Windows does restrict some clearings.

= = = =

What are those "Galaxy Client Helper Application" and "Galaxy Communication Services"?

Purpose - what do they do or what are they supposed to do?

Did you knowingly install them? Before or on the 28th?

Galaxy Client is a game store client that acts in many regards like Steam -- it auto-updates and provides a centralized management of games from that vendor. It is infamous for being a bit crashy, but the crashes do not disrupt regular operations.

 

[SteJBorchard]

Does this happen to ANY / All of the USB ports for this computer, have you tried a USB hub?

Does this happen for ONLY USB Drives/USB Storage drives or do you have issues with other USB Drives.

I would IMO disable any process or service that you are not critically needing right now, until you figure this out. you can re-enable them and restart as needed.

 

[sammyblue]

Does this happen to ANY / All of the USB ports for this computer, have you tried a USB hub?

It happens on various USB ports -- not limited to any one, and issues arose across different physical port arrays.

Does this happen for ONLY USB Drives/USB Storage drives or do you have issues with other USB Drives.

Only with USB connected hard drives. The USB flash drive I had connected did not drop or corrupt, and other USB items continued to function.

I would IMO disable any process or service that you are not critically needing right now, until you figure this out. you can re-enable them and restart as needed.

Removing the USB camera and previous drive bay has resulted in a cessation of the issue. I am going to give it a full week(until Sunday) to test out, then try reconnecting the camera and monitor the system.

 

[SteJBorchard]

Is it only 1 specific Brand of USB Hard Drives or does it happen to many different ones?

I'm grasping at straws. Maybe check all the rails with a Digital multi meter. I got nothing else. Sorry.

 

[johnbl]

funny, I just assumed his galaxy of games is the problem.
I would start by removing it, then go into control panel, device manager find the menu item to show hidden devices and then delete all of the greyed out usb devices and reboot.

 

[sammyblue]

funny, I just assumed his galaxy of games is the problem.
I would start by removing it, then go into control panel, device manager find the menu item to show hidden devices and then delete all of the greyed out usb devices and reboot.

Galaxy has been on the machine for over a year.

 

[Ralston18]

per @johnbl

I woluld do the same: remove Galaxy.

Galaxy may not be the direct cause - just simply involved.

Something else may have changed and is conflicting with and stopping Galaxy.

Look for other changes that occured just prior to or at the time the problems started.

And read through the entries for all of those errors and warnings beginning on the 28th.

Plus that Informational event on the 27th.

 

[telelaci]

Since this past weekend, my USB attached hard drives have been corrupted. I believe I noticed the issues crop up on the 24th.

I thought it was power issues -- I have tried direct to wall, SP, and battery UPS as power sources and the drives keep getting logically damaged.

I bought new drives, new DAS case, shorter usb cable. Every HDD I hook up via USB, regardless of port, eventually shows as RAW.

I tried rolling back the Windows update that was forced on me this last weekend, but I think only a partial rollback was possible.

The new drives were formatted and I used DiskGenius to transfer documents from the corrupted existing drives to one(not both) of the new drives. This completed without issue.

At some point while I was away from the computer, both new drives were trashed and showed as RAW. I reformatted them and powered down for the night. This morning after boot, the one with the recovered files was RAW again.

All data on the drive has been scanned by AV before. All data on the drive has existed for months to years as an archive.

The only changes that took place before running the USB drives without issue for a year+ are:

1. I moved into a different room in the house around 1.5 to 2 weeks before this started happening,

2. The Windows 11 Update that was forced sometime between Friday and Sunday.

This vary bad thing happens to me also. Some facts in my case.
It happens only with SATA3/USB3 dual dock station, never with single dock station. Dock station brand/chipset, HDD brand, size, all irrelevant, doesn't matter. The dock station is externally powered. My computer runs 7/24. The disks were formatted NTFS partitions on GPT table. Both disks get corrupted (dual dock) in the same time. It happens on Win10 and Win11 also. Never happens on Linux, Debian/Ubuntu. The time is various, sometimes it gets corrupted after few hours, sometimes it's few days.

You didn't mention the HDD dock type, is it dual or single? If dual, then it's the same error as mine, and this can be eliminated by using single docking stations. For now. Of course it would be much better to know the reason behind or the culprit part.

 

[sammyblue]

This vary bad thing happens to me also. Some facts in my case.
It happens only with SATA3/USB3 dual dock station, never with single dock station. Dock station brand/chipset, HDD brand, size, all irrelevant, doesn't matter. The dock station is externally powered. My computer runs 7/24. The disks were formatted NTFS partitions on GPT table. Both disks get corrupted (dual dock) in the same time. It happens on Win10 and Win11 also. Never happens on Linux, Debian/Ubuntu. The time is various, sometimes it gets corrupted after few hours, sometimes it's few days.

You didn't mention the HDD dock type, is it dual or single? If dual, then it's the same error as mine, and this can be eliminated by using single docking stations. For now. Of course it would be much better to know the reason behind or the culprit part.

Both of the drive bays are dual. My setup seems the same as yours, as far as formatting and such.

I had been using the original drive enclosure for over a year without incident.

 

[telelaci]

You didn't mention so far, they were dual drive docks, and I "guessed" it anyway. So it can't be a coincidence, but a key factor. As I mentioned I don't know much more than you, I don't know the reason behind the problem.
I have no idea why were you asymptomatic so far, and everything just worked fine for you. What happened to your system??? I have this problem long ago and it's a quite stable error, I mean I can reproduce it easily: I connect a dual drive dock, I format the disks, I copy data to them, I run it 7/24 and I wait. The disaster will come soon, maybe 1 day maybe 3 but it will be there for sure.
Would you please buy and test a single drive bay? Or maybe remove one disk in the dual one? And then maybe we could find a workaround. It's better than nothing. The worst part is the sudden and total data loss. The recovery is very long and only partial with DiskGenius.

 

[sammyblue]

Today I used the drives and USB camera at the same time. Two incidents happened at about 70 and 92 minutes into using them -- both times, an error 157(disk surprise removed), followed by other disk operation errors(IO, read/write, appcrash, whatever I was doing).

I have used the camera for 60 or less minutes without issue once, but was not actively reading or writing to the drives at the time. I have otherwise had no issues with the drives since my last posting here.

All drivers are up to date per Windows.

The USB port I am using for the camera is the USB 3 port on the top of the case as opposed to the 4-port USB array on the rear of the case.

The headset plugged in to the other USB 3 port atop the case has had no issues or interactions over the years of use.

My best guess is that a Windows 11 update has broken/caused device conflicts with USB devices connected to the machine.