I need a new external drive. Recomendations?

[SpyderTracks]

Unfortunately (for me) Lacie are the only drives that have failed early...although the 5 year warranty has meant I've always got a replacement. But then I stop trusting them and they sit on the shelf unused.

In my experience, they simply were not worth the premium price.

View attachment 42185

Have just taken my only remaining 2 off the shelf to photograph, and thought I'd plug them in to see if I'd actually put anything on them.

The dark grey 5TB LaCe Mobile Drive (which was a replacement for an Apple-silver coloured one I sent in for repair) is completely empty except for some Lacie/Seagate warranty documentation.

The orange 4TB LaCie Rugged drive was a replacement also, but I don't know if there's anything on it as it just clicks when I plug it in...and I don't remember it doing that when I first got it back...and it's been on the shelf since about 2021 (which is when I ordered the other was to use in the meantime).

Now I just stick to Crucial X6/X8/X9 as they're more portable (lighter, smaller), faster & more reliable (in my experience)...but of course the equivalent (and likely more expensive) LaCie SSD versions would have the same benefits...but could you trust their reliability?
View attachment 42187

Must say, my Crucial X9 Pro has really surprised me, it's tiny plus the speeds are seriously impressive.

I'd lost favour with Crucial since they were one of the leaders when 2.5" SSDs first came to market, then they seemed to loose their way a bit, but they're definitely regaining the crown in recent years

 

[Martinr36]

Must say, my Crucial X9 Pro has really surprised me, it's tiny plus the speeds are seriously impressive.

View attachment 42192

I'd lost favour with Crucial since they were one of the leaders when 2.5" SSDs first came to market, then they seemed to loose their way a bit, but they're definitely regaining the crown in recent years

I've got several crucial m.2, not had any trouble with them

 

[psyxologos]

Hi again everyone. OP here. I finally mastered the courage to open the bay. As you said, it is a regular 3.5' (pics attached). So I would be obliged if you could please let me know which dock/hot swap set up would you recommend, and do I need to remove anything else from the drive itself to get it to fit in them?

Many thanks!

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hi again everyone. OP here. I finally mastered the courage to open the bay. As you said, it is a regular 3.5' (pics attached). So I would be obliged if you could please let me know which dock/hot swap set up would you recommend, and do I need to remove anything else from the drive itself to get it to fit in them?

Many thanks!

All docks have already been linked, it's a standard Seagate SATA HDD.

 

[psyxologos]

Thanks. I just thought things might change now I gave more information...

 

[Scott]

No, still the same. There were 2 scenarios for you:

1. It was SATA..... the links are relevant.
2. It wasn't..... it needs the bin as you're not going to get another case to suit as a shell.

Just grab one of the 3.5" drive bays that you fancy.

 

[psyxologos]

No, still the same. There were 2 scenarios for you:

1. It was SATA..... the links are relevant.
2. It wasn't..... it needs the bin as you're not going to get another case to suit as a shell.

Just grab one of the 3.5" drive bays that you fancy.

Thank you. I just grabbed the Sabrent as people said it has better cooling.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thank you. I just grabbed the Sabrent as people said it has better cooling.

Cooling is irrelevant on a SATA disk, any heat they generate is marginal above ambient.

I'm a bit concerned you're looking at an M2 listing (which does require cooling) in which case you're on entirely the wrong product?

 

[psyxologos]

Cooling is irrelevant on a SATA disk, any heat they generate is marginal above ambient.

I'm a bit concerned you're looking at an M2 listing (which does require cooling) in which case you're on entirely the wrong product?

No, it is just a SATA. I was refering to reviews I saw. Please ignore this comment. The thing now is that I inserted the SATA in the enclosure, turned it on and I got a warning message that the disk needed formating. After doing that the system now says the disk has a capacity of 233GB, as oposed to the 2TB the disk was in its original enclosure. I am not sure what happened here. I am formating the disk again to see if this fixes anything. Any ideas as to what is going on?

Thanks

 

[psyxologos]

OK. I just had a look at the disk management and I can see this. How do I access the unallocated part, and why is there a partition? I never created one. Is this where the data I previously had stored is, and can I access it?

Thanks again!

 

[SpyderTracks]

OK. I just had a look at the disk management and I can see this. How do I access the unallocated part, and why is there a partition? I never created one. Is this where the data I previously had stored is, and can I access it?

Thanks again!

You've formatted the f: partition, so that will have wiped that section

You'd have to use a data recovery tool if you wanted to get any data off that, there's a chance it will be lost.

The unallocated part I'm guessing was a different partition type, perhaps created on an older windows? But it looks unreadable by windows. You could try some kind of tool like TestDisk, may be able to read what's on there

TestDisk Download

Download TestDisk & PhotoRec. TestDisk is a free and open source data recovery software tool designed to recover lost partition and unerase deleted files. PhotoRec is a file carver data recovery software tool.

www.cgsecurity.org

 

[psyxologos]

You've formatted the f: partition, so that will have wiped that section

You'd have to use a data recovery tool if you wanted to get any data off that, there's a chance it will be lost.

The unallocated part I'm guessing was a different partition type, perhaps created on an older windows? But it looks unreadable by windows. You could try some kind of tool like TestDisk, may be able to read what's on there

TestDisk Download

Download TestDisk & PhotoRec. TestDisk is a free and open source data recovery software tool designed to recover lost partition and unerase deleted files. PhotoRec is a file carver data recovery software tool.

www.cgsecurity.org

Thank you. It is the unallocated part that I am interested in. There were never any partitions on the disk. This was inside a Seagate expansion external HDD enclosure that developed a fault (please see first post). The unallocated space here could correspond to the disk space that actually had the data, the 232GB sounds about right on the amount of free space the disk had before I took it off the Seagate enclosure.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thank you. It is the unallocated part that I am interested in. There were never any partitions on the disk. This was inside a Seagate expansion external HDD enclosure that developed a fault (please see first post). The unallocated space here could correspond to the disk space that actually had the data, the 232GB sounds about right on the amount of free space the disk had before I took it off the Seagate enclosure.

If the disk had developed an issue, it's possible the sectors had failed which is a hardware issue on the physical disk, once the sectors are bad, they're lost and unrecoverable.

You can verify this by doing a chkdsk /r once you've got the drive readable in windows, if it returns any bad sectors, you know the disk is dying, it will fail sector by sector, could take 2 hours, could take several months.

CHKDSK /F /R/X Command to Fix Hard Drive Errors Win 10/11

What does CHKDSK /F /R /X mean? How to use CHKDSK? In this article, you will learn the difference between CHKDSK /F, CHKDSK /R, and CHKDSK /R as well as how to run CHKDSK /F/R/X to fix hard drive errors on Windows 10.

www.easeus.com

I'm not suggesting to use EaseUS (although it is a very good tool, if you find yourself doing a lot of things with system partitions, it's worth paying for, for non-system partitions, the free version should cover you), if you carry on it gives you how to run the command in cmd.

But don't create any new partition on that area or format it as that will wipe anything that's on there, until you're sure it's unrecoverable, or you've rescued what you need.

 

[psyxologos]

If the disk had developed an issue, it's possible the sectors had failed which is a hardware issue on the physical disk, once the sectors are bad, they're lost and unrecoverable.

You can verify this by doing a chkdsk /r once you've got the drive readable in windows, if it returns any bad sectors, you know the disk is dying, it will fail sector by sector, could take 2 hours, could take several months.

CHKDSK /F /R/X Command to Fix Hard Drive Errors Win 10/11

What does CHKDSK /F /R /X mean? How to use CHKDSK? In this article, you will learn the difference between CHKDSK /F, CHKDSK /R, and CHKDSK /R as well as how to run CHKDSK /F/R/X to fix hard drive errors on Windows 10.

www.easeus.com

I'm not suggesting to use EaseUS (although it is a very good tool, if you find yourself doing a lot of things with system partitions, it's worth paying for, for non-system partitions, the free version should cover you), if you carry on it gives you how to run the command in cmd.

But don't create any new partition on that area or format it as that will wipe anything that's on there, until you're sure it's unrecoverable, or you've rescued what you need.

Thank you. At the moment I am using the test disk program you suggested. It could see thr disk as 2000GB, so the whole 2TB. How can I get the drive readable in windows? Another thought I have was to use the 'expand' functionality on disk management. Thanks again and apologies for the many questions

 

[psyxologos]

When I said I could use the 'expand' option, I meant to do so on the partition windows can see, so to expand to what it sees as 'unallocated'. Would that work?

 

[psyxologos]

That's where I am at the moment with the test disk..

 

[SpyderTracks]

When I said I could use the 'expand' option, I meant to do so on the partition windows can see, so to expand to what it sees as 'unallocated'. Would that work?

That will overwrote the unallocated space with blank partition.

You need to restore that partition to be readable in windows, if you can’t then use TestDisk to recover what you can. The TestDisk site has guides

You may find EaseUS Free easier, it’s surprisingly powerful. I used it just a few weeks ago as I had a really old HDD from years ago which had been setup as a dynamic volume which was deprecated years ago. Dynamic volumes aren’t readable in Linux so wanted to convert it to standard. The normal way to do this would be to copy off the data and reformat it as a new partition, but I didn’t have space to copy off the data. EaseUS was able to change the partition while retaining data on the free version which is a pretty advanced process. I was really impressed

 

[psyxologos]

You need to restore that partition to be readable in windows, if you can’t then use TestDisk to recover what you can. The TestDisk site has guides

Thank you. Yes, ideally I would like to see if any of the data can be read. Then I just want to unify the drive in one, unpartitioned space.

 

[psyxologos]

I could not get the information I needed from the testDisk site so I just used the 'expand' option in the disk manager and at least got the disk to diplay its full capacity in Windows. I just need to copy the files in it again. Thanks for your help!

 

[SpyderTracks]

I could not get the information I needed from the testDisk site so I just used the 'expand' option in the disk manager and at least got the disk to diplay its full capacity in Windows. I just need to copy the files in it again. Thanks for your help!

Do do a full chkdsk as already advised, if there are bad sectors you've got limited time until the drive fails fully.