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what will cause an external hard drive to fail


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<p>In the beginning of January, 2013, I began using two new external hard drives from seagate, a goflex and a backup, 1T each, and began storing my raw photographic images on them, one to work from, one as a backup. One has already failed. I notice when using my macbook, I sometimes seemingly randomly get a message that I have not properly disconnected a disk, when I have not in fact ejected anything. Can this mean there is a problem with my usb port, and can this cause my external hard drive, camera card, etc., to become corrupted and/or unrecognizable by the computer? Or is it more likely a bump or something to the disc, or are the lifespans of these hard drives sometimes just that short? Seagate said usually 2-4 years, that doesn't seem long enough, and I am looking for other options. How does a hard drive become corrupted? I spent much time trying and have not been able to recover that drive, almost all of it was backed up, luckily.</p>
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<p>If you are getting a random, "not properly disconnected" when you have not disconnected anything - that can be a major problem. That means it can be disconnecting when it's trying to write to the disk - a great scenario for file/disk corruption. That could be hardware or software problem. You need to have Apple take a look at that.<br /><br />Beyond that hard knocks, magnetic fields, power fluctuations, extreme humidity/temp can cause problems for hard drive. That said, hard drives are pretty stable these days. Every once in a while there can be a bad "lot" of drives but that doesn't happen very often. </p>
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<p>If you're having random disconnect issues, try the usual(cue the skipping CD/broken record):<br>

Swap cables. Yes, sometimes the cables go bad just sitting there.<br>

Swap external drives. If you can afford them, I recommend OWC Mercury Elite external drives, only because they've had the lowest failure rate for me. <br>

Swap the actual HDD from the offending uni into an empty external housing. The controlling electronics could fail while the HDD might be fine. With Seagate consumer products, it's 50/50.<br>

As you can see, having swappable replacement components on hand is generally required to troubleshoot. That's what the computer repair shop'll do. Think of them as 'spares'. <br>

Once the cables and drives have been eliminated as suspects, then turn to the computer.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>I find the mini USB3.0 connectors to the drive to be very sensitive to alignment and slight movement causing intermittent disconnects. My problem drives are Seagate while my wife has problems with WD. Note that Seagate mobile drives have a removable interface personality module that has an internal connector that could cause problems. One other issue is drive spin down/up due to power saving settings and the latency triggers errors with the OS.</p>
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<p>From time to time I have found it useful to have a separate wiring harness/power supply which allows me to hook up uncased SATA hard disks (2.5 or 3.5 inch) to my computer via a USB port. This has made it possible to read HDDs from dead computers and in your case would allow you to substitute the existing cables, which may have a break in them as mentioned above.</p>
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<p>There seems to be a problem with the current Mac OS in which an external hard disk will disconnect when you plug in another USB device. This is an OS software problem. There was another thread somewhere else that discussed external drives and the failure rate. It was mentioned that Seagate had a relative problem. A new drive is good for quite a long time unless it was originally defective. There are built in ways that the drive disregards bad blocks as all drives seem to have some defects. Within the warranty period most manufacturers replace their drives if there is a defect. This is hardly comforting if you have precious images lost. With the prices so low, it's not a bad idea to back up to multiple drives. Copy your originals directly to each backup because copying from one backup to another can introduce errors also. Drive failure is then related to time that the drive is spinning. It is inevitable that your drive may fail at some point if it runs long enough.<br>

Check this article running 25,000 drives for 4 years:<br>

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actually-live-for</p>

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<p>I've had the opposite problems with my MacBookPro Retina. Firewire drives on a chain gave me those errors, switching to USB and they stopped. The drives didn't fail, but kept going offline and popping an OS error. </p>

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management" (pluralsight.com)

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<p>I would agree with Keith. The external drive enclosures and electronics are sometimes (many times) the weak link. The drives can be rock solid, but I've seen them put in enclosures without fans. So it's just a matter of time until the electronics COOK, and start giving problems. A few years back that happened to four out of six drives from a big name company within three months. Removing the drives and putting them in a better case with a fan solved the problems.</p>
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<p>Aside from all the great feedback here, and as Alan mentions "COOK", heat is the number one enemy of just about any electronic device. HDD are very happy in cool places.<br>

The ambient room temp is inportant, and the case temp. It can be just a few degrees with continued spinning that can brick a drive in an overheated environment. I would also recommend at least a 5-15% buffer to the cooler side on specifications on drive heat tolerance.<br>

Another problem I have seen with external drives, in Particular I had picked up a 2 drive ThermalTake BlacX Duet with eSata, USB connection, and this thing never let the drives spin down other than full speed...ON, even when the system was asleep. The drives would just stay on and get hot. I tired it on a couple Win OSes (XP, Win7-64bit). Not sure who is at fault, the OS or the controller in the device?! (I think the Thermaltake device). I recommend testing for this before leaving drives in it. I still have a use for such a device, and I use a 8Bay SansDigital which does power down on the same OSes, but it has drive cages to screw them into.</p>

 

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<p>A couple of links that might be helpful/interesting:<br>

<a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Minimizing_Hard_Disk_Drive_Failure_and_Data_Loss">Minimizing Hard Disk Drive Failure and Data Loss</a><br>

<a href="http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf">Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population</a></p>

<p>It turns out that cooler isn't better for hard-disk longevity, in fact too cool is worse than too hot...<br>

The second link is a study be Google of their hard-disks and they found that: "...failures do not increase when the average temperature increases. In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures [<35C] are associated with higher failure rates. Only at very high temperatures [> 45C] is there a slight reversal of this trend." (<a href="http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf#page=6">see Figure 4</a>).</p>

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<p>First, try a different USB cable. I have found them to be surprisingly flaky.<br>

Second, try another USB port on the computer, these seem to get loose and randomly drop out connections just from normal jiggling.</p>

<p>Otherwise as above.</p>

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<p>To answer your original question, what will cause HDD to fail, pretty much only 3 things:</p>

<p>1. extreme physical shock (e.g. drop it)<br>

2. severe local magnetic field (e.g. put it on top of a loudspeaker for a while)<br>

3. manufacturing defect</p>

<p>The last is usually the cause for early failure.<br>

We have hundreds of desktop PC's and generally keep them running for about 4 years before complete replacement, and we virtually never have HDD failures.<br>

Laptop HDD seem to fail more often, I guess you'd expect that as they can run hotter, and get knocked about a lot!</p>

<h1> </h1>

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<p>For those cases where you absolutely need to just get something OFF a failing/failed drive, try cooling it down in the freezer (or outside this time of year in the Midwest US). The last internal drive I had problems with had to be rescued in this manner. I took it to the garage (at 0 degrees F.) and on a SATA-USB adapter and my laptop. I left it there copying overnight and got every last file off the drive that refused to work at room temp. </p>
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<p>All sorts of things can happen. It could be as simple as a bad cable or a bad port. I would not use Seagate, if I were you, but that's your prerogative. Stay away from Lacie too. Some swear by both of those though.</p>

<p>Asking how a hard drive can become corrupted is like asking how a person can crash their car. It happens . . . myriad ways. There can be a software issue. A drive can be dropped. Humidity can happen. A faulty drive could be the culprit. Like I said . . . a bad cable can be the problem. It could be a hardware issue in the computer. There are SO many things that could happen.</p>

<p>You are smart to have back-ups. That is what they are for.</p>

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<p>Geoff,<br>

Extremes are just that, extreme situations.<br>

The article explains 47c shouldn't be exceeded. This is not hard to achieve in a enclosure on a spinning drive in a relatively warm room(27C+ room). In the summer time with a somewhat warm room, very easy for a drive to exceed that. Keep in mind the drive is recommended to run around 27C+. If your room is 27C or more, rest assured your drive is hotter.<br>

"Each drive has a specified lower and upper bounded operating temperature. In addition, drives that constantly run relatively hot, i.e. near the upper bound of the operating temperature are thought to have a reduced lifetime.<br>

Inadequate ventilation, especially during the summer months, can cause a drive's temperature to exceed safe levels. In desktops, this can be handled by ensuring that a <a title="w:computer fan" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/computer_fan" target="_blank">computer fan</a> is installed near each drive to move hot air outside."<br>

"mostly flat failure rate at mid-range temperatures and a modest increase at the low end of the temperature distribution. <strong>What stands out are the 3 and 4-year old drives, where the trend for higher failures with higher temperature is much more constant and also more pronounced"</strong><br>

<strong>"We can conclude that at moderate temperature ranges it is likely that there are other effects which affect failure rates much more strongly than temperatures do.</strong>"<br>

Hot is not moderate. relatively speaking to "office like environments"(23C) hot is too hot.<br>

I am sure cool leaning to cold, enough to need acclimation is surely not a good thing.</p>

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  • 2 weeks later...

<p>For practical purposes, out of the top brands like Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Samsung (never had a Samsung drive) I advise to buy the drive with the longest warranty. At least in a RAID5 setup with a 1 drive failure, you will be able to send it out for replacement without data loss.<br>

Right now I have WD Caviar Blacks, and Hitachi Deskstar in my servers. I have 24 drives total. Slowly I plan to upgrade the 2Tb to 4TB and lessen the bulk.</p>

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