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External Drive Help

Hi All,

I had a surprise yesterday when my external drive - a Western Digital 1TB My Passport suddenly refused to recognise certain of my music folders (high-res and DSD downloads). I also received an error message - cyclic redundance check. Fortunately after running tools and check disk, the drive started working again and I re-imported the missing music files in JRiver.

This external drive is connected to my Baetis Server and plays music (mainly CDs ripped to FLAC using DB Poweramp) through the JRiver software. However, I am also starting to download more music over the web and this issue got me thinking as to how I might improve my back up system as these downloads have no physical media back up like a CD.

Currently as per Baetis` recommendations, I rip music to a separate external drive on my laptop using DB Poweramp or I download directly from websites like HD Tracks - in each case this music is transferred to My Passport External Drive. In addition, every time I download new music I manually copy across these files to a Seagate 4TB back-up hard drive.

Do you think I could be doing anything better in terms of handling files? I suspect it becomes a matter of how much redundancy I am prepared to pay for but interested to hear from people with more experience. It would also be great to be able to configure the Seagate back-up drive to copy certain files automatically from the My Passport drive but not sure this is possible.

Thanks in advance

James
vicks7
yioryos's avatar
yioryos
723 posts
 
Yes,it's genuine Western digital sealed,exactly identical to my first one.
Bought from same store,Canada Computers outlet.
The store clerk explained to me that hard drives go up and down in price,also Canadian dollars is weak right now.
Best
George
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
I just went through a cyclic redundancy check issue with a WD 4 Tb drive. It worked fine most of the time then I would see an error. I tried ckdisk on it and it never finished. I also had virus scans just hang. Finally replaced the drive and all is well. I think there was something wrong with the control hardware/software but I could not track it down. My point is that you should keep a close eye on your drive. The problem may come back.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
I have good luck with 1TB Fantom drives. For about 10 years i use one at work for backup and one at home. I use it for the music, pictures etc. In addition I have two backups (total of 4 Fantoms). I keep one at home and one at work just in case of fire or theft. I do backup from time to time alternating drives. Unpowered drives tend not to fail. As I said I have good luck because other people have failures with them. Same might be true with WD. I don't know if it is just particular batch or luck.
vicks7 OP
182 posts
 
Agreed Dtc and the problem did come back. The drive is now useless so I have just ordered a replacement Seagate external drive. It is shame that the companies that sell the music downloads do not allow us to re-download in these circumstances although this would also be a major hassle so having decent back-up seems the only way to deal with this.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"Same might be true with WD. I don't know if it is just particular batch or luck.
Kijanki (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread)"

WD used to be one of the best HD's you could get, and then, for whatever reason, the quality went downhill. I used to by custom PC's from this one company, because I used to be into flight simulators, and I remember when they were forced to drop WD altogether. But you're right. Even if the quality has gone down, that doesn't mean that every HD they make will fail.

Vicks7,

Sorry. My comment about the HD being a fake was a joke. There's been a current rise in the number of counterfeit audio products. Cables mostly. I didn't think anyone would take it seriously.
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