Are portable drives prone to corruption?

[Skipper007]

Hello,

I have a 1.5TB, 2.5 inch, USB3 Seagate Goflex I use to move files between two desktops that are in different locations.

I've occasionally copied files to the drive, only to find they are corrupt when I try and read them on the other PC. It's not the only drive I have that sometimes ends up with corrupt files but I feel like it has more issues with it than my other drives.

Anyone else find their externals/portables are prone to corrupting data? And if so, anyone know what the cause is? Is USB less reliable? Is it the vibrations/mishaps of travel? Are certain drives more prone to it than others? (I worry about whether drives that have more platters are more prone to damage)

I'd like to resolve the issue because I'd like to be able to carry VMs back and forth between my PCs and not have to worry about corrupting a 20GB VM.

 

[iroc409]

I've had some issues with internal drives in cheap external enclosures, but my factory external drives have been good. I use them for backups, and at work for music storage, and don't really have any issues.

I had an issue with a USB3 drive failing in FreeBSD/ZFS, and I had to re-initialize it. The drive didn't fail, I wasn't sure what happened there. It happened a couple times, but when I upgraded my server the issues have disappeared.

ETA: It's entirely possible you have a bad drive, or adapter, or something. Have you done any tests on it?

 

[evilsofa]

What is between the two locations? For example, would you be going through or near some sort of security scanner, or walking through an MRI lab? I know that last is silly but you get the idea.

What do you place the drive on or in when transporting it between the two locations? This includes both whatever you carry it with and a location like the trunk of a car or a table that is between the two locations.

Basically, I'm asking if it is getting hit with EMP, static electricity, or magnetics, or even just too much heat, or experiencing dew point by getting very cold and then being brought back inside. Like the old story of a kid losing the homework on his floppy disks because he was attaching them to the refrigerator with a magnet.

 

[djflow195]

When is the corruption occurring?

Use Teracopy with verification to copy the files to the USB drive. Write down the checksum of the file. Make sure to eject the drive properly (Safely remove hardware) or power off PC before removal.

At this point the files on the drive should be okay.

As a test, plug it back in and check the files again to make sure.

At the other site, copy the files over using Teracopy with verificaion and make sure the checksum matches with what you wrote down.

I've been doing file moves this way for years and never had corruption in transit. Rarely I have issues during the copy to/from USB drive, but Teracopy will catch that and redo the copy.

 

[steakman1971]

I have a mix of Seagate and Toshiba portables - no problems here.

 

[Skipper007]

ETA: It's entirely possible you have a bad drive, or adapter, or something. Have you done any tests on it?

Seagate's tools show it being fine and the corruption issues actually haven't occurred in the last few months - but before that I had frequent issues with it across both computers spanning 1-2 years.

What is between the two locations? For example, would you be going through or near some sort of security scanner, or walking through an MRI lab? I know that last is silly but you get the idea.

I transport the drive between my place near campus and my parent's house in a different part of the city. About 75 minutes by bus and commuter train. No security scans that I am aware of. I live in the Pacific Northwest so the hot and cold snaps don't tend to be too bad either.

When is the corruption occurring?

To be honest, recently it hasn't been. But months back I had a lot of trouble with corrupt files when transferring files too and from the drive. And this would often occur before traveling. I'd copy files, try and verify with RapidCRC (didn't know about Teracopy and it's ability to do this automatically), find some were corrupt. And it would happen on both of my desktops, both of which I'm still using.

I can't recall doing anything that stopped the issue, though I have made changes to the machines since (pulled an old IDE DVD-ROM out of one, replaced the BIOS battery on the other, replaced the Windows 7 installs on both).

Teracopy looks really useful for verifying file transfers occur properly but for some files I edit frequently I'd like to be able to keep my master copy on the external drive rather than having to keep the master on the desktop and transfer it ever time I go home for the weekend/come back for classes.