Odd External HD Behavior

**Lionheart** · December 5th, 2009, 10:47

Hey all,

Something is going on with my two external HD's.

Lately, it takes perhaps 2 to 4 min's for them to both go online. They are mounted in a little HD housing pod. One HD will set there and click, boot up, click, then restart its booting process again. The other one takes for ever to show a life sign, then comes online. The first one is not even a year old. The second one is 3 years old, but rarely used.

Recently, I took out a newish 2 year old HD out that I had in the module that I was using for the Apple backup drive. It too had started developing some issues on booting up, taking ages. When I was pulling it out (for good), I was listening for this weird noise, which the module was also making. Turns out, the small fan in the box was the culprit, making a whine now and then that would freak me out. The kind of noise a bearing makes when its going, like a loud squeal. Well, I havent been able to find a replacement fan for it as it has a very odd little plug, like what the main CPU has, very small little thing. So I have the modual cover off.

The HD's run fine all day when they are warmed up, but in the mornings, they take forever. It used to be that when I turned the module on, the drives came on almost instantly. Now they make these weird 'tack' noises, like the little reader arm in the drive is whacking the side of the HD case. Loud little tack noises. And it seems like both of them are doing it now. This is in the past 2 weeks.

On the one 'tacking', I have all my sims, FSX, FS9, etc.

Do you think they are both on their way out? Could this module box be the culprit?

:scratches chin.... :

Bill

***gigabyte*** · December 5th, 2009, 11:02

That is a crap shoot Bill, normally the Click Click Click ... is a sign of imminent failure, however I have seen drives act like this when they are very cool at start up (not likely in AZ unless you have them beside an AC outlet) and when the power is not quite up to spec. You can check the power thing pretty easy, reseat all the power cables and if it does not make any difference get a Multi Meter and check the voltage to the drives it should be with in .4 - .6 V of what the label says, normally slightly higher - I use a Predictor dock for external drives and it has a 12V power supply, at the output side of the supply I get a steady 12.6V.

The other test you can do is get the drives warmed up and manually shut them down for about 5 minutes, if it is the read write head failing it will normally have the same behavour when you power them back up.

Regardless of the cause or culprit highly recommend you get things backed-up and verified ASAP - remember Gig's Motto - "He who laughs last has a GOOD backup"

***safn1949*** · December 5th, 2009, 13:08

Dude,please back them up.I lost 175 gigs of stuff that way

,I now have my files backed up on 3 different HD's.

**Lionheart** · December 5th, 2009, 13:47

Thanks guys. Will do.

They are next to my window, which I have open at night, and its been very cold lately, so they are cold when they are starting up.

Bill

***gigabyte*** · December 5th, 2009, 14:25

Depending on the range of the temp change you can see some strange behavour especialy from things like external drives. They generally run fairly hot and if they get very cool when shut down it can mean a lot of expansion and contraction, and that can cause what you describe for sure - the backup is still a good idea tho....

harleyman · December 5th, 2009, 14:58

YUP...Keep them out of that Arizona moisture near the window..

That sound / behavior is more than likely the head movement beginning to fail....

Action...Get a new Terabyte drive for 80 bucks and put it all onto that..Then pull the old ones and put them away till in a disaster situation to use...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136317

Yes its the WD green..But its 32 Mb Cache and will not be accessed 100% of the time so should last quite a while...

**Lionheart** · December 7th, 2009, 23:49

Well, tonight it was getting real bad. I tried a test. I took out the 1TB drive that has FS on it, took it out of the dual HD external drive box, mounted it in my handy dandy Vantec Nexstar dock and Voila.. The drive turns on 'instantly' and no 'tacking' sounds.

The box that I had it in must have gone seriously bad 'big time'.

I went to NewEgg.com to look up the name of this goofy thing (dual bay external drive enclosure) and found that NewEgg no longer carry it. I guess I know why. I then went through Google looking for it and found it no where online, lol... eeeks!

When I first purchased it, it was supposed to have a fan that only came on when it was hot. Nope. Full blast all the time. To quiet it down, I got some of those cotton stickon things you put on the bottoms of table items, like a lamp of bottom of a computer box, etc. Keeps it from scratching the surface of tables. I used two per corner, stacked, to keep the sound down, lol..

The fan went last week. Havent found one to replace it yet.

Now I find out it was the box that was resetting the HD's continuously, over and over, for perhaps 5 or more min's.

I hope this helps out others that are getting into external enclosures for their extra 3.5" internal drives. What a nightmare.

Bill

harleyman · December 8th, 2009, 03:18

Thanks...Good to know..

Who would have thought the enclosure would go bad...I thought they were just a hot plug for the drive with a fan???

***Chacha*** · December 8th, 2009, 04:51

Originally Posted by Lionheart

Well, tonight it was getting real bad. I tried a test. I took out the 1TB drive that has FS on it, took it out of the dual HD external drive box, mounted it in my handy dandy Vantec Nexstar dock and Voila.. The drive turns on 'instantly' and no 'tacking' sounds.

The box that I had it in must have gone seriously bad 'big time'.

I went to NewEgg.com to look up the name of this goofy thing (dual bay external drive enclosure) and found that NewEgg no longer carry it. I guess I know why. I then went through Google looking for it and found it no where online, lol... eeeks!

When I first purchased it, it was supposed to have a fan that only came on when it was hot. Nope. Full blast all the time. To quiet it down, I got some of those cotton stickon things you put on the bottoms of table items, like a lamp of bottom of a computer box, etc. Keeps it from scratching the surface of tables. I used two per corner, stacked, to keep the sound down, lol..

The fan went last week. Havent found one to replace it yet.

Now I find out it was the box that was resetting the HD's continuously, over and over, for perhaps 5 or more min's.

I hope this helps out others that are getting into external enclosures for their extra 3.5" internal drives. What a nightmare.

Bill

There should be a switch that regulates the fan on all the time, on when hot and off ....

**Cazzie** · December 8th, 2009, 05:00

Bill,

Sorry to hear of your troubles, but thanks to the SOH crowd for a little foresight wake up, because I have an external also and tap wood, no problems so far, even after their demise of my MB when lightning hit in July. But reading all this and I am off to get anothe HD to back up my other HD. I have already lost too much from two years ago. I always backup payware programs and keys and such on a CD, but the size of my repaint kits and files are larger than most folks FS9 or FSX.

I would certainly hate to lose all that, not to mention all my photographs and screenshots.

Thanks guys, good luck Bill.

Caz

***MaddogK*** · December 8th, 2009, 09:57

I have 3 removable drive enclosures, and ALL of them have had the same issue at one time or the other- fan failures. because some enclosures power the fans from the enclosures interface boards when the fans start to fail the drives inside don't get recognized at all, or take forever to come up (at least mine act that way). Try disconnecting the fan and see if the drives immediately come up when you power back up. I replaced my fans with bigger external units, and ran seperate power connectors back to the comps power supply- problems solved.

I also had an Iomega network drive appear to fail but the power supply was bad, even a NEW iomega PSunit had the same problem (drive would reboot occasionally and take forever to come up on boot), so I built my own PSU from a peter chou unit from the Betson catalogue (26 bucks), and the drive works fine (9 months and counting).

***FengZ*** · December 8th, 2009, 10:15

excessive clicking sounds are never good on a HD...starting backing up your files.

take a look at these:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=466

i just picked up a few for my studio and home. They are essential external RAID drives. It's two 1TB hard drives built into one case. All you have to do it plug it in and use it. It'll automatically copy your files twice. So it'll show up as a 1TB drive on your MAC, but it's actually 2TB.

Hopefully this will save me some time and give me a peace of mind. Took me all weekend to combine all my other external HDs onto these....but now at least i know i have everything backed up twice.

-feng

**Lionheart** · December 8th, 2009, 11:16

Thanks guys.

Caz,

Thats good to know on the fan. I have had fan issues with it and Ive had the fan out for the past week. Couldnt find a replacement with only two wires and a MoBo mini white plug.

Ive retired that box. Its now a paper weight. Should be good for hiding things in.

Thanks Feng. I was looking at enclosures yesterday. That one is nice for the auto-mirror system.

I noticed the one you have picked out has the Death Star architecture grating on the back.

Nice!

I have my eyes on an 8 stack. I could have my Apple backup, all my spare drives in it, and have a space left over as well for another.

I am going to have to email the power company and see how much it will cost to up my electrical power grid...