[SOLVED] Corrupt Backup Problems

I've notice this for a week or so, my backups have been corrupt. This has been the case with Acronis True Image 2010, Macrium & Todo (both free & Pro). But it's only on one of my backup drives, the Samsung that I bought last year. My other backup drive (Seagate FreeAgent) is fine.

I had it installed inside of what was once one of those Simple Drive enclosures, I bought the enclosure alone, the actual HDD was removed & sold separately. There has been no problems with performing the backups, they all went through with no issues. Only when I try to recover (or verify them) them, there's problems.

I've performed CHKDSK & CHKDSK /R on it, ran full scans with NOD32, SAS, MBAM, F-Secure Online Scanner & MS Safety Scanner, no viruses of other malware has been found. The only notable issue that I've found is that the HDD gets hotter than what I consider to be normal, in other words, too hot to hold.

The enclosure that it was in is fully a plastic one, I have a Vantec aluminum one. Would that one keep the drive cooler over the one it was in? I figured it being in a much larger enclosure, with plenty of ventilation, it would be OK. Or could it be the chipset of the Simple Drive enclosure itself be the problem. Being that the backups are completing, it's leaving me with more questions than answers.

Tonight, I'll wipe the HDD with the tool in Mini Tool Partition Wizard, and place it in the Vantec case, and see what happens.

Anyone else been through this?

Cat

If your external drive is getting too hot to hold, then that's too hot! When a drive starts reaching over 60-70 Celesius the platters expand ever so slightly which affects the data written to them. It doesn't take much to cause issues. What does SIW tell you the hard drive temps are?

Never, ever use a plastic external drive case. A non-vented all aluminum one is the next best bet and after that is one with an internal fan. My portable 2.5" Samsung drive is in an all aluminum case, except the for the ends and it stays at about 36 Celsius. I keep my two 1TB Samsung drives in a Sans Digital JBOD external case with fan blowing constantly.

A good rule of thumb is that with external hard drive enclosures is to only have turned on when necessary, particularly if their non-vented. In an all aluminum non-vented case I would not keep it on for more than an hour or so at the maximum. I have left non-vented drives on for several hours and they would pretty warm to the touch, but not hot at all.

Remember as Digerati so fondly reminds us: Heat is the BANE of ALL electronics!

Thanks Nibs. I know that there's temp limits with HDD's, and those are much lower than the max that some CPU's can run before rebooting. I once had the Acronis Drive Monitor (a free app) installed, it would begin to flag it for heat at 107F, it would show as critical at anything above 127F. That HDD was at least 127F, at the minimum.

Actually, I didn't use any software to determine temps on this HDD, it was when I removed it from the case it was in, that I noticed how hot it was. From now on, I'll be sure to monitor my backup HDD temps.

Hopefully it's alright, but if not, that Samsung Spinpoint F3 (1TB HD103SJ) has a 3 year warranty to cover my back. That's what it's there for, and I don't hesitate for a moment to file a warranty claim.

It's unfortunate that many computer users oversees this, many threads on this very forum began over issues right out of the box. Unless it something really minor (like a driver update), if I were to buy a defective computer, it would go straight back to where it came from. A new computer that freezes, won't sleep or wake up from sleep, are things that the OEM is supposed to have right before leaving the factory.

Cat