Recurring HD failures

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schultzgg

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Recurring HD failures

PostWed Jul 20, 2022 4:40 pm

Hi everybody,

This year, I've had 4 external hard drives fail on me. I'm guessing it can't be bad luck anymore, so I'm hoping to diagnose the issue. The biggest change in the past year is that I've started using Resolve, and I started shooting a lot of raw video with an old HD BMPCC.

Would anyone suspect an issue coming from using Resolve, maybe in conjunction with other programs?

I'm on a 2017 iMac (Monterey 12.1).

One potential clue: sometimes I get an error message saying a drive can't be ejected "because one or more programs may be using it," even if I close all programs and finder windows.

I've been guilty of unplugging drives in those situations. Maybe that's the cause? But I also have a hard time imagining they're that fragile.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I also would appreciate any advice on how to repair a drive in these situations. I can't afford to keep going to the specialist every few months unfortunately.

I'd appreciate any tips. I'm currently investigating a better backup solution, but a NAS seems overkill for a single-person at-home studio.

Thanks!
Gary
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Marc Wielage

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Re: Recurring HD failures

PostFri Jul 22, 2022 6:14 am

schultzgg wrote:This year, I've had 4 external hard drives fail on me. I'm guessing it can't be bad luck anymore, so I'm hoping to diagnose the issue. The biggest change in the past year is that I've started using Resolve, and I started shooting a lot of raw video with an old HD BMPCC.

What brand? Are they all the same models?

Note that often, the internal hard drive is fine but the enclosure has failed (for whatever reason). Take the drive out, put it in another enclosure, it's fine.

Some brands seem to last longer than others. We've had great luck with G-Tech, and horrible luck with Lacie -- your miles may vary. We tend to buy a low-capacity G-Tech enclosure, open it up, toss the drive, and replace it with a much higher-capacity drive like a 12TB or 16TB drive instead. This works fine, particularly if you use the same kind of drive the enclosure is made for (like Western Digitals and HGST's).

It's not the OS, it's not you, it's not Resolve, it's just one of those things you have to deal with. In 30 years, I've never had a hard drive fail that we couldn't recover, but we're stubborn and never give up. Prosoft Data Rescue has saved us on a few memorable occasions. And whatever you do... back up. Often.
marc wielage, csi • VP/color & workflow • chroma | hollywood
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Uli Plank

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Re: Recurring HD failures

PostFri Jul 22, 2022 8:45 am

Are they really dead or only show problems?
If you didn't format them in APFS, Disk Warrior might be able to fix issues.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

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Charles Bennett

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Re: Recurring HD failures

PostFri Jul 22, 2022 10:54 am

Unplugging a drive while it is running with the in use message will potentially corrupt the catalogue file on the drive so you will not be able to see or access the drive contents.
Resolve Studio 18.6.6 build 7
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schultzgg

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Re: Recurring HD failures

PostSat Jul 23, 2022 9:57 am

Marc Wielage wrote:
schultzgg wrote:This year, I've had 4 external hard drives fail on me. I'm guessing it can't be bad luck anymore, so I'm hoping to diagnose the issue. The biggest change in the past year is that I've started using Resolve, and I started shooting a lot of raw video with an old HD BMPCC.

What brand? Are they all the same models?

Note that often, the internal hard drive is fine but the enclosure has failed (for whatever reason). Take the drive out, put it in another enclosure, it's fine.

Some brands seem to last longer than others. We've had great luck with G-Tech, and horrible luck with Lacie -- your miles may vary. We tend to buy a low-capacity G-Tech enclosure, open it up, toss the drive, and replace it with a much higher-capacity drive like a 12TB or 16TB drive instead. This works fine, particularly if you use the same kind of drive the enclosure is made for (like Western Digitals and HGST's).

It's not the OS, it's not you, it's not Resolve, it's just one of those things you have to deal with. In 30 years, I've never had a hard drive fail that we couldn't recover, but we're stubborn and never give up. Prosoft Data Rescue has saved us on a few memorable occasions. And whatever you do... back up. Often.


1 Sabrent SSD, 1 Scandisk SSD, 1 WD Elements HD, and 1 other (forgot right now).

Both the Sabrent and WD Elements were less than a month old; the Scandisk was less than a year old.

These are all small, portable drives, so I'm not sure if I can easily remove them from their enclosures. I'm not an expert, but I remember being able to do that with larger drives.
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schultzgg

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Re: Recurring HD failures

PostSat Jul 23, 2022 10:18 am

Thanks for the ideas everybody.

Uli Plank wrote:Are they really dead or only show problems?
If you didn't format them in APFS, Disk Warrior might be able to fix issues.


They just show problems (they don't mount), but they power on and are visible via Disk Utility.

I used Disk Drill and was able to recover the data, which I saved onto another external drive.

I used a friend's computer to perform the recovery and what's strange, after the recovery, both external drives are showing the same ejection problem: cannot be ejected because they may be in use by other programs.

I tried everything I could find to resolve the issue, but no luck:
- Logging out and back in
- I used "Mountain", an app that helps with un-mounting drives
- Various Terminal command lines to help eject the drive
- and I'm currently running a couple different anti virus/malware scans (although I always have something in the background)

I guess I'll eventually just shut it down and unplug them, but I'm a bit nervous.

Marc Wielage wrote:What brand? Are they all the same models?


- Sabrent (SSD, USB-C),
- WD Elements (HD, USB-A)
- SanDisk (SSD, USB-C)..
- and one other USB-A I forget now.

So, if the issue is happening across various ports with various cables, I doubt I have a faulty port/cable problem.
And since the drives aren't ejecting from a 2nd computer, I'm suspicious of the problem being the computer at all.

Is there anything I can do to diagnose the drives further?

Thanks!
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schultzgg

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Re: Recurring HD failures

PostSat Jul 23, 2022 10:52 am

I made a little more progress.

It seems that both computers I used were continually indexing my external hard drives (for Finder/Spotlight). I put the external drives on the "do not index" list and then force quit the indexing processes via Activity Monitor, and then I could eject the drives safely.

This article was the only one that worked for me:
https://mycyberuniverse.com/macos/how-f ... y-use.html

This never happened to me before, and I wonder if it's the sheer amount of files I've started using, now that I'm recording DNG image sequences; it just takes forever to index them all?

I'm hoping that unplugging the drives without quitting the index process is what caused the corrupted file structures in the first place.
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Marc Wielage

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Re: Recurring HD failures

PostSat Jul 30, 2022 9:18 am

schultzgg wrote:It seems that both computers I used were continually indexing my external hard drives (for Finder/Spotlight). I put the external drives on the "do not index" list and then force quit the indexing processes via Activity Monitor, and then I could eject the drives safely.

We have used the little Sabrent enclosures and even the portable WD Elements drive for shipping out deliverables to clients, but not for actual editing or anything like that. For source drives (color or editing), I wouldn't consider a portable drive unless I was up against the wall and working on location or something. I've seen some really flaky Sabrent enclosures, so just based on anecdotal experience, I think their reliability is questionable. I've had better luck with the little G-Tech SSDs, but again, we're not talking about a big heavy-duty, day-in/day-out project.
Last edited by Marc Wielage on Sun Aug 07, 2022 7:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
marc wielage, csi • VP/color & workflow • chroma | hollywood
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Uli Plank

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Re: Recurring HD failures

PostSat Jul 30, 2022 9:46 am

The Acasis enclosures are working very well here.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

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