Tech Question about my HardDriver -- Weasel_k's Journal -- Fur Affinity [dot] net

Tech Question about my HardDriver

9 years ago General

I have this on going theme with my external HDDs. After a while (about 12 month) strange things start to happen. I get message that my HardDrive needs to be formated before using it. And one of the HDD stops being visible for my PC. After it no longer can be accessed though Windows I plug it into a Mac where for some reasons its can be accessed for a while before its stops workin on Mac is well. I use Mac just so I can copy all the files to a new driver. And it keeps happening over and over. Noted it usually happens to my largest HDDs. Like 1TB or larger.
Is it just because they are so big they become unusable with the time? Should I rather buy 2 of 500MB disks instead of single 1TB disk? Is it something I do wrong? And how should I 'formated' an external disc? I tried to try Defragmentation but for some reason I can only do that on the main disc C.

Thanks in advance for any help.

15 Comments

Scrawnoisis ~scrawnoisis

Base Artist, Logoist and D&D DM

9 years ago

First off: DO NOT FORMAT RIGHT NOW. Formatting means deleting everything on the hard drive and "cleaning" it during that process aswell. Unless you have a backup for all athe important stuff elsewhere, I wouldn't recommend it.

And the issue is not related to the storage capacity, a 500gb drive can have just the same issues.

Now for the actual tech support:
Have you tried using a different cable and/or a different USB port to connect the hard drive to your pc?
How often do you use your external harddrives?
And within this year, have you changed/reinstalled your windows/whatever operating system you use?

Weasel_k ~weaselk

Digital Artist

9 years ago

Yeah, I know that formating disc basically means erasing all th memory.

I think I tried using different cables in a past.
Its basically always plugged to the PC since I save my work there.
No, I just plan to reinstall Windows in near future for the first time in 2 years.

Scrawnoisis ~scrawnoisis

Base Artist, Logoist and D&D DM

9 years ago

Having it always plugged in sounds a bit like it defeats the purpose of an external drive. A second internal drive sounds more reasonable, if you're not on a lappy.
What is the brand/name of the external HDD?

Weasel_k ~weaselk

Digital Artist

9 years ago

Elements. But before that I tried ADATA and Verbatim and it was the same.
So you say I better plug externals only when I need to use them, right?

PS I already bought second internal which I will install soon.

Scrawnoisis ~scrawnoisis

Base Artist, Logoist and D&D DM

9 years ago

Basically, yeah. It "normally" should not be a problem to have external drives connected all the time, but an internal drive is always the better alternative in your case, simply because of the speed of data transfer alone.

Weasel_k ~weaselk

Digital Artist

9 years ago

I see. Thanks for the info! I still be using the externals but I shall plug them only when I need them. The second internal is West Gate Green and its 2TB. I wanna install Linux on this one. It shouldn't be a prob, yes?

Scrawnoisis ~scrawnoisis

Base Artist, Logoist and D&D DM

9 years ago

Shouldn't be a problem no, but you can also just use both internal hard drives with the windows you have now.

Weasel_k ~weaselk

Digital Artist

9 years ago

Yeah sure. But I wanna use Linux since its has it's own perks. And I can do more with Linux than I can do with Windows like customizing things. The only problem is that the first time I tried Ubuntu about 2 years ago I had issue with using 2 screens and the graphic tablet. Sometimes it didnt see the tablet when I used Gimp. And cursor was always vibrating and disappearing when i was using the pen. Hope I will not have same problems with the latest Ubuntu. If not, I will use it as secondary internal.

Scrawnoisis ~scrawnoisis

Base Artist, Logoist and D&D DM

9 years ago

Yeah, not sure if Ubuntu itself got any better with using graphic tablets as input devices. But I've read a while ago that using a dosbox for the art-program/tablet drivers can help that jittery problem. You'll have to look that up once the time arrives.

Weasel_k ~weaselk

Digital Artist

9 years ago

Oh, i see. In that case I maybe better use second HDD as extra internal instead. Tinkering with systems via command desk or DOS is still too complex for me.

Scrawnoisis ~scrawnoisis

Base Artist, Logoist and D&D DM

9 years ago

Oh, sorry for my miscommunication. What I meant was a programme that "sandboxes" programs and makes them run like on windows or so.

Weasel_k ~weaselk

Digital Artist

9 years ago

oooooh, like Vine, yes?

Weasel_k ~weaselk

Digital Artist

9 years ago

Thou when I will have time I shall look it up how to fix that issues with Ubuntu. Unless everything will work fine the first time i try it.

Mewtwolover ~mewtwolover

Digital Artist

9 years ago

It isn't problem, I recommend to make a partition for it because it doesn't need the whole drive, Linux uses file system (ext4) which Windows can't read so partitioning allows Windows to use the drive as well. 120 GB is enough for Ubuntu 16.04.

Ubuntu includes good tools for checking HDD's so I recommend to check that faulty external HDD after you've installed it.

Inb4 "Ubuntu can be installed to NTFS partition", don't even think about doing so, NTFS is shit compared to ext4.

Weasel_k ~weaselk

Digital Artist

9 years ago

Will keep it in mind, mate. Tnx!

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