Novel Point Of Failure

[Piyono]

Recently one of my backup drives—an out-of-warranty 6TB G-Tech which I purchased in 2017—started throwing critical filesystem errors whenever it was in use. I'd have to CHKDSK it nearly every time I switched it on and soon it started corrupting data so I bought some components to replace it (a WD Gold 8TB which I scored for like CAD$100 brand new on Kijiji and a separate UGreen enclosure from Amazon).

I figured I'd try to transfer the bulk of the backup data from the G-Tech and make up any corrupted files from my primary internal data drive.

Out of curiousity I opened the Gdrive enclosure (for the first time, breaking the seal), removed the HGST drive and plugged it into a SATA > USB adapter. To my surprise the drive spun up with no issues. I turned it on and off several times and moved some data around but could not get the drive to misbehave.

I tried it in the Ugreen enclosure and found that it worked fine there as well, so I plugged it back into its original G-Tech enclosure and immediately the problem returned. This was unexpected. In 25 years I've seen a lot of drives go belly-up but don't think I've ever had a chipset failure like this before.

I'm presenting this as a cautionary tale: If your prefab external drive fails make sure to test the drive itself on a before condemning it.

 

[Piyono]

On a side note I really like the GDrive enclosure and wish I could salvage it but the board has like 30 components, many of them ICs and is probably beyond my skills as a repair technician. None of the capacitors look swollen and that's about as far as I'm willing to investigate.

 

[LunarMist]

Failures on the bridge board or the power supply were common on external drives a few years ago. Some of the boards had some weird formatting or encryption that created a big hassle. Also try replacing the 12V power brick if it has one.

 

[LunarMist]

One of the worst failires was on the mobile drives when they started building a single board on the drive that also contained the bridge circuits. If you damaged the USB connector (for example falling off the table or other yank) the drive was screwed.

 

[Piyono]

Failures on the bridge board or the power supply were common on external drives a few years ago. Some of the boards had some weird formatting or encryption that created a big hassle. Also try replacing the 12V power brick if it has one.

Ah, were they all from a particular brand?
I tested the power adapter and it appears to be working. I left it in place and it's currently powering the replacement enclosure.

 

[Piyono]

One of the worst failires was on the mobile drives when they started building a single board on the drive that also contained the bridge circuits. If you damaged the USB connector (for example falling off the table or other yank) the drive was screwed.

Yeah, I've encountered those.
500GB 3.5" spinners From WD, if memory serves, with a damaged USB 3 Micro B connector (worst connector ever?).
I thought I could pop the drive out and pop it into an enclosure but nope!

 

[Piyono]

I tested the power adapter and it appears to be working. I left it in place and it's currently powering the replacement enclosure.

As I'm typing this the new drive blinks off and back on again, completely at random. Maybe I'll use the new power adapter after all...

 

[LunarMist]

I don't recall. Maybe Merc knows or he will just say WD as bioreflex.
Once I had some strange external drive of unknown brand and the power supply died. It was not a single sided 12V, but a 4-pin doohicky.
Anyways, I had a terrible time getting the drive out of the case. They used some strange screws.
Another time I found a super thin 3.5" hard drive. I guess it had only one platter.

 

[sdbardwick]

Haven't encountered any drives with truly integrated USB ports (not saying they don't exist, just haven't encountered any yet). Seagate and WD do make some portable drives that look integrated, but actually have USB bridge board attached by metal foil tape to standard SATA connector that look integrated.

 

[jtr1962]

On a side note I really like the GDrive enclosure and wish I could salvage it but the board has like 30 components, many of them ICs and is probably beyond my skills as a repair technician. None of the capacitors look swollen and that's about as far as I'm willing to investigate.

I'm an EE and frankly that's as far as I'd go on most repairs these days. Maybe I'd also look for blown diodes or MOSFETs, basically anything handling any amount of power, as those are most likely to go. After that, I usually don't bother. Typically a lot of the chips are custom jobs made solely for whoever makes the product. I couldn't get a replacement anyway, even if I determined it was bad. Or there could be off the shelf microcontrollers, but again I can't fix it without the firmware to load on the replacement microcontroller.

On the plus side, it seems like it's very rare for electronics to fail, barring of course getting hit by surges or voltage spikes. I have a VFD alarm clock from 1978 which has been running continuously. Who knows, it may even last another 45 years.

 

[LunarMist]

All of these are why it's just not a good idea to buy those external drives. If necessary then at least keep extra backups and encrapt them, so the failed drives can simply be disposed without wasting time on recoveries.

 

[Mercutio]

I only ever saw USB integrated interface drives from WD. Really. It was a lot more common among the 2.5" models than 3.5", but I saw it with both. I will also say that plugging a problematic external drive in to an internal interface fixed a problem maybe 20% of the time. That's not a bad option if the next step is tossing the stupid thing.

I am also not a big fan of external hard drives. Too many things happen to them.

 

[Piyono]

I only ever saw USB integrated interface drives from WD. Really. It was a lot more common among the 2.5" models than 3.5", but I saw it with both. I will also say that plugging a problematic external drive in to an internal interface fixed a problem maybe 20% of the time. That's not a bad option if the next step is tossing the stupid thing.

Yeah, I don't know why I typed 3.5". The drive with the integrated USB board was one of those 2.5" portables.
I think I ended up soldering leads directly to it. It was a long time ago.

I am also not a big fan of external hard drives. Too many things happen to them.

What do you use?

 

[Mercutio]

What do you use?

Large flash drives. I have a bunch of 250 and 500GB Sandisk Fit drives in my pocket most of the time.

 

[LunarMist]

Those FITs are not so fit and they are slow (probably QLC). Do you think that data integrity is better than an external mini USB-C SSD? Most of Ihem are USB 3.2 gen or even gen x2 now and quite fast.

I have a few of the Extreme Pro Type A thumbic drives, which are at least decent at ~350 writes, but I would not trust them as much as a Sandisk Extreme Pro or Samsung real SSD for example.

 

[Mercutio]

Anything that goes on any sort of external storage is temporary at best. My main need for them is to
1. comfortably carry in my pocket.
2. Hold disk images and boot environments
3. Transfer data from old systems to newer ones.

I have a bunch of them on a pair of key ring attached via lanyard that just goes in my pocket at the same time as my keys.
If one of the boot drives dies, I'll just recreate it.

 

[LunarMist]

Other than for body scanners, I keep a 4TB Extreme Pro in my pants until clearing customs.