What is happening to my external hard drives?

[mangalhovsky]

I have first gen 16" macbook pro running Monterey.

I keep my important files on three drives at all times. They are all less than 3 year old, have more than 30% space available and are plugged in only a few times a year to sync between them.

Drive A started slowing down last week and would not show up on the desktop every time. I tried to get things out of it but nothing. I didn't know what else to do so I just assumed it had failed.

Now, just days later, drive B is very very slow to access, it just sits there loading. I was able to copy things from it to drive C yesterday but now I can't even see the files on drive B and I'm afraid of plugging in drive C again.

Disk utility says drive B is okay but when I try to look at the files Finder just says "Loading..." and does not show anything.

I ran system diagnostics on startup, no problems found. Even installed Avira anti virus, nothing found. Deleted it afterwards.

Of course this could be just a coincidence, both drives failing at the same time, but is there something else I should check before making new copies from the last remaining drive? Is there a way to check if it's a corrupt file or something ? Or if it's my computer's problem rather than the drives?

Also, I just got two new drives. How should I prepare them ? Format to APFS and then how do I make sure SMART is turned on (these show up as "Not Supported" on disk utility)? Any other precautions ? How can I make sure my particular laptop is not the culprit?

What do you think about formatting one to exfat? This way if I have problems I can always try to access the files on windows.

What is happening and what else can I try to do?

 

[chown33]

Did you use the same cable and port to connect each drive? If so, maybe the problem is the cable or port. Try a different one. A cable or connector can be intermittent, so things are fine most of the time, but only fail occasionally.

What power source are you using for the drives, bus-power or an AC adapter? If bus-powered, try using the AC adapter instead.

Are you using an external hub or dock with its own power supply? If so, maybe the problem is the hub or its power supply.

The theme in all the above is "components other than the drive that must work correctly". So if you have any other components in your setup, such as the drives being networked, or plugged into a router, or whatever, please describe the complete setup. This includes any other devices you have plugged into the bus (presumably USB) at the same time the drives were. Sometimes other devices can cause the bus to malfunction.


It might also be useful to identify the specific drive model, where and when purchased, etc.

If they all came from the same batch, then they could all be failing at about the same time for a similar reason. For example, if they were manufactured at the same time and place, a bad batch of electronics could give an above-average failure rate to drives from that batch.


Finally, if you decide to copy from the last remaining drive, I recommend doing so with the minimum of devices on the bus, with all drives powered from AC adapters, and AFTER trying different cables, even if that means you buy some new cables.

 

[Fishrrman]

'I keep my important files on three drives at all times.'

Are you saying that each drive is intended to have the same files as the other?
In other words, drive B is a backup of drive A, and drive C is also a backup?

Are these platter-based hard drives?
Or... are they SSDs?

THE BEST way to keep all three drives "the same" is to use a cloning app like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Nothing better...

Also... if the drives are platter-based HDDs, I WOULD NOT use APFS.
Instead, use HFS+ (in disk utility, "Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format".

 

[mangalhovsky]

Hi chown33 thanks for replying,



I have used multiple cables and tried the four ports on my laptop. They each have a usb to usb-c cable and I’ve also tried the normal cable they came with plus adaptors.



Drives A and B are 2.5” drives and are bus powered only. Drive C is AC powered.



No docks, plugged straight in. The only adaptor I’ve tried is the basic apple usb 3 to usb-c.



The problem is absolutely the drives as they are giving me all sorts of issues, only showing up on the desktop sometimes, not unmounting, unable to show their contents etc. The only other thing plugged in is the power adaptor.



They are all western digital, the small ones are 4tb passport drives, the 3.5” one is 12TB MyBook desktop drive. All bought separately in the last 3 or so years, plugged in only a few times a year to sync.



Hi Fishrrman, thank you for your time,



Yes, correct, they have 99% the same items. I usually use disk A and then use Chronosync to sync the other two once in a while.



They are platter based regular hard drives, 2.5 and 3.5”



I have the carbon copy cloner trial here ready to copy drive C to a brand new drive which I am still not sure if I should format as exFat of HFS+. These are all formatted as HFS+ currently but I’ve read that exFat may be handy for cross platform troubleshooting.



My main fear now is that there is something wrong with my computer (screwing up two drives just days apart) or corrupted files in the last remaining drive that corrupt the copy to a brand new one.



Is there anything I can do? (already scanned with Avira antivirus which seems ridiculous but you never know…)

 

[satcomer]

If you don't want any problems on your Mac format them HFS+! IMHO most externals should be HFS+ sense Swift is made for just thunderbolt SSD you boot from!

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:
"I have the carbon copy cloner trial here ready to copy drive C to a brand new drive which I am still not sure if I should format as exFat of HFS+. These are all formatted as HFS+ currently but I’ve read that exFat may be handy for cross platform troubleshooting."

If the drives are used ONLY with Macs, and if you store "Mac data" on them, my recommendation is that you DO NOT use exFat.

Use a "Mac formatted drive" for Macs.
Things will just go better that way.

I strongly suggest that since you have CCC, that you TRY it.
Take an empty drive, format it for HFS+.
Then try a basic clone with CCC.
You will see how well it works in very short order.

There's really not much more to say other than, "try it".