External Hard Drive Issue

[neilwillz]

Hi Guys,
Looking for some advice. I'm a photographer and have two Western Digital RED 4TB external storage drives for archiving photos, in an Orico 4 bay enclosure. They both contain the same files and have approx 350GB of space remaining.

I have named the drives WD 4TB archive 1 and WD 4TB archive 2.

Over the past week I have noticed that archive 2 is not showing on my desktop when plugged in or in disk utility.
And now archive 1 has issues too. I begin to write files to it and it stops completely and freezes, and has all gone slow to read.

I have tried the following

• Checked all cables for damage
• Cleaned out any dust (there was minimal)
• Changed the USB it goes in to my iMac
• Bought a new USB cable
• Tried both hard drives in another enclosure with the same results - so it doesn't seem to be and enclosure issue
• Tried running First Aid on drives

Anybody had any similar issues or know a possible solution?

I have attached the spec of my machine.

Any help appreciated.
Many Thanks
Neil

 

[apostolosdt]

Suspicious coincidence, that two identical disks of known reputation start failing almost on the same day, don't you think? Check the enclosure, I'd say, first.

I use three copies of my good images on external disks, and I know failure is inevitable. If you value your galleries, have a look at LaCie products. The fact that they have official failure rates as well is indicative that no hard disks, platters or SSDs, are 100% error-free.

 

[neilwillz]

The same results with a different enclosure.

I do have further off site backups of the galleries.

Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

TIME TO REPLACE THOSE DRIVES, NOW.

And rebuild from your backups onto the new ones.

I wouldn't trust either of them any longer!

 

[neilwillz]

TIME TO REPLACE THOSE DRIVES, NOW.

And rebuild from your backups onto the new ones.

I wouldn't trust either of them any longer!

I'm thinking the same. I have an offsite backup as a safety net but I agree