Recently one of my backup drives—an out-of-warranty 6TB G-Tech which I purchased in 2017—started throwing critical filesystem errors whenever it was in use. I'd have to CHKDSK it nearly every time I switched it on and soon it started corrupting data so I bought some components to replace it (a WD Gold 8TB which I scored for like CAD$100 brand new on Kijiji and a separate UGreen enclosure from Amazon).
I figured I'd try to transfer the bulk of the backup data from the G-Tech and make up any corrupted files from my primary internal data drive.
Out of curiousity I opened the Gdrive enclosure (for the first time, breaking the seal), removed the HGST drive and plugged it into a SATA > USB adapter. To my surprise the drive spun up with no issues. I turned it on and off several times and moved some data around but could not get the drive to misbehave.
I tried it in the Ugreen enclosure and found that it worked fine there as well, so I plugged it back into its original G-Tech enclosure and immediately the problem returned. This was unexpected. In 25 years I've seen a lot of drives go belly-up but don't think I've ever had a chipset failure like this before.
I'm presenting this as a cautionary tale: If your prefab external drive fails make sure to test the drive itself on a before condemning it.
I figured I'd try to transfer the bulk of the backup data from the G-Tech and make up any corrupted files from my primary internal data drive.
Out of curiousity I opened the Gdrive enclosure (for the first time, breaking the seal), removed the HGST drive and plugged it into a SATA > USB adapter. To my surprise the drive spun up with no issues. I turned it on and off several times and moved some data around but could not get the drive to misbehave.
I tried it in the Ugreen enclosure and found that it worked fine there as well, so I plugged it back into its original G-Tech enclosure and immediately the problem returned. This was unexpected. In 25 years I've seen a lot of drives go belly-up but don't think I've ever had a chipset failure like this before.
I'm presenting this as a cautionary tale: If your prefab external drive fails make sure to test the drive itself on a before condemning it.
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