Windows EHD Nightmare

[Xernicus]

OK, cool. my D: Drive is partitioned 100GB/400GB. The 400GB is Mint, which I think I'm going to wipe, add a smaller 50GB partition and install Ubuntu to that leaving 350GB free space for saving my data from the EHD.. I didn't really like Mint anyway. I just needed the 4TB EHD to last until spring when I get my taxes and can build, finally, my new Computer with all the newest good stuff in it.

 

In tghe meantime, I'l try the things you guys posted here. Thanks!

Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, Debian, Manjaro, Puppy, Slackware, etc... they're all Linux- one and the same. They will accomplish what you need and want in an operating system. Even if the GUI doesn't suit you, you can install another that works for you. I'm personally a KDE person. I remember saving up and purchasing my first linux distro. Linux has always been free, but the GUI and included software wasn't- and isn't always free. It was Red Hat Professional 7.3. I still have all of the disks.

 

​Anyways, I remember frantically copying the data I cared about off of my 3TB drive. I expected my 1TB drive to fail, I bought another one in expectation. How wrong could I have been. In the end, I lost over 1.5TB worth of videos, music, software, and documents. I copied what truly mattered though, and I can't even remember what I lost now. I thought everything mattered- I was wrong. This was in the early days of multiple terabyte hard drives. Thought my drive was under warranty... I was wrong. A seller unlawfully violated the warranty. It was a Seagate drive, but NewEgg was ultimately responsible via lawsuit. They committed fraud- or their supplier (unlikely) by re-writing EEPROMs of drives to sell them as refurbished or new when they were used, they sold drives sold to computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, etc) as factory new drives... Thank god for consumer protection attorneys. I still buy some gear from NewEgg, but all HDDs and critical hardware come from local stores or Amazon.  

 

Anyways, let's have a look at the statistics of this external drive you need. Could you post the SMART stats? Whether it appears in the BIOS, Linux File manager, gparted, testdisk, etc... the more info we have, the more we can help you.

[-=HipKat=-]

Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, Debian, Manjaro, Puppy, Slackware, etc... they're all Linux- one and the same. They will accomplish what you need and want in an operating system. Even if the GUI doesn't suit you, you can install another that works for you. I'm personally a KDE person. I remember saving up and purchasing my first linux distro. Linux has always been free, but the GUI and included software wasn't- and isn't always free. It was Red Hat Professional 7.3. I still have all of the disks.

 

​Anyways, I remember frantically copying the data I cared about off of my 3TB drive. I expected my 1TB drive to fail, I bought another one in expectation. How wrong could I have been. In the end, I lost over 1.5TB worth of videos, music, software, and documents. I copied what truly mattered though, and I can't even remember what I lost now. I thought everything mattered- I was wrong. This was in the early days of multiple terabyte hard drives. Thought my drive was under warranty... I was wrong. A seller unlawfully violated the warranty. It was a Seagate drive, but NewEgg was ultimately responsible via lawsuit. They committed fraud- or their supplier (unlikely) by re-writing EEPROMs of drives to sell them as refurbished or new when they were used, they sold drives sold to computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, etc) as factory new drives... Thank god for consumer protection attorneys. I still buy some gear from NewEgg, but all HDDs and critical hardware come from local stores or Amazon.  

 

Anyways, let's have a look at the statistics of this external drive you need. Could you post the SMART stats? Whether it appears in the BIOS, Linux File manager, gparted, testdisk, etc... the more info we have, the more we can help you.

I'm running the WD Drive Utilities now, since I just did a reboot. Smart passed, but no log that I can find. I doing a Drive Scan and I'll post what it finds

 

Drive scan failed BUT all my files seem accessible finally so I need to just back them up (798 GB!!)and then replace the drive

Edited October 23, 2017 by -=HipKat=-

[cookiem0nster]

backup all irreplaceable files first before screwing around with anything else.

 

I have had to do that on a few that would have lost everything trying to chkdisk. (one had the circuit board burning up, the other was dropped and the platters were being damaged by the internals so both were a race against time, but still... backup irreplaceable files first)

 

 

Also don't need to defrag giant hdds so much nowadays, and never defrag solid state drives - they don't have moving parts so they dont need defragged - you just shorten their life.

Edited October 25, 2017 by cookiem0nster

[Xernicus]

backup all irreplaceable files first before screwing around with anything else.

 

I have had to do that on a few that would have lost everything trying to chkdisk. (one had the circuit board burning up, the other was dropped and the platters were being damaged by the internals so both were a race against time, but still... backup irreplaceable files first)

 

 

Also don't need to defrag giant hdds so much nowadays, and never defrag solid state drives - they don't have moving parts so they dont need defragged - you just shorten their life.

From Windows Vista on up, hard drives are on an automatic defrag schedule- usually once per week. I set mine to a monthly basis and haven't looked back. For WD Green and Blue drives, and the consumer Seagate "Desktop HDDs", you might keep it once per week.

For enterprise drives, defrag as often as you want- or not- they can handle whatever you throw at them. My drives usually read and write upwards of 100 gigs per day. 

Defragging drives isn't required much anymore, thanks mainly to modern filesystems that can handle fragmentation better. I remember a computer tech (before my time as one) telling me that on FAT filesystems, 10% fragmentation could reduce the performance of the drive by 25%. It was made worse by larger disk sizes and the advent of FAT32. That isn't the case anymore.

 

​Regarding SSD's... correct, they should never be defragmented. But if you're running Windows 7 SP1 or newer, that isn't an issue as the operating system will run the TRIM command on the drive rather than defragmenting it. "Trimming" an SSD is something you definitely want to do.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Xernicus

[RedBaird]

...

I remember a computer tech (before my time as one) telling me that on FAT filesystems, 10% fragmentation could reduce the performance of the drive by 25%. It was made worse by larger disk sizes and the advent of FAT32. That isn't the case anymore.

I remember stories about certain FAT-users who wondered why their HDs broke down so often.  It turned out that they were defragging their MFM / RLL HDs every day to get that every bit of performance that they could.  http://www.redhill.net.au/d/10.php

[-=HipKat=-]

So, when I do get a HDD, should I leave it FAT32 or reformat to NFSC? Seems like Fat is outdated technology, isn't it?

[Xernicus]

FAT32 is extremely outdated. But any new hard drive should come blank. No file system, data or anything. You'll want to either respond to the box asked to format the drive or use the Windows Disk Utility to format the drive NTFS.

[Broham]

If you ever want to use your ehd with an apple device, I would recommend using exFAT.

If not, NTFS it.

 

(https://fossbytes.com/fat32-vs-ntfs-vs-exfat-difference-three-file-systems/)