Grumpy Hard Drive

[AlanHo]

I have a new Western Digital 1 TB SATA hard drive in an expernal enclosure connected to the PC by eSATA from the socket on the mobo. The drive is used for storing daily and weekly back-ups alongside a second external 640 GB eSATA hard drive which also takes identical back-ups. This second drive is stored in an outbuilding when I am not at home. Security some might regard as belt, braces and a piece of string.

The computer is dual boot Vista Ultimate and Windows 7.

I use Acronis to take back-ups of my system weekly (full back-ups - not incremental).

I use Second Copy to back up at computer shut-down all data files that have changed since the last back up onto the two external hard drives.

With increasing regularity the computer is running check disk at boot up on just this new external drive. If I open the log for Second Copy I am able to see that the back-up was OK on the 640 GB drive but failed on the new 1 TB drive when the computer was shut down the previous evening. The log shows that a file on that drive was corrupted. It is not always the same file - or one that was backed-up the previous evening. I assume that Second Copy scans the hard drive with the data on it and then scans the external drive to determine which files have been changed, added or deleted and then backs them up accordingly.

Boot time check disk is only happening on the new drive and occurs with both Vista and Windows 7 on roughly 50% of boot ups. The screen display for check disc has never shown any errors found.

I have run the Western Digital diagnostic program - it took nearly 4 hours to carry out a thorough check of all sectors and reported that the drive had passed the test.

Anyone have a clue what might be happening..................

[-pops-]

Is this a WD "My Book" drive? I've had two of these fail on me - the second was a brand new higher capacity replacement for the first.

The outbuilding - is it subject to wide temperature variations? I could imagine that very large drives might be very temperamental in this regard. Just a thought.

[AlanHo]

Is this a WD "My Book" drive? I've had two of these fail on me - the second was a brand new higher capacity replacement for the first.

The outbuilding - is it subject to wide temperature variations? I could imagine that very large drives might be very temperamental in this regard. Just a thought.

It is a standard WD drive that I installed in an Antec fan cooled enclosure 2 weeks ago.

It is not the 1 TG problem drive that goes outside - it has a cosseted life in my study.

[D4\/!d]

Hello Alan, you might remember introducing me to Second Copy a few days ago.

I have been using it - or at least trying to get used to it since then.

I must say I would not have persevered with the software had it not been for your recommendation.

Second Copy seems to be rather fragile - not at all robust.

It unfailingly throws up an error log at the end.

It keeps complaining about not being able to delete files - even though I have not instructed it to Delete anything.

I simply want a straightforward backup of the files updated today - just like you.

My outlook mail is included in the backup, and copying my outlook.pst takes forever to complete.

So back to your question, what might be happening.

I think the Second Copy software is struggling and messing things up for you.

It is prolly finding it hard to cope with T1 drive and messing up/corrupting the $mft file.

Which in turn causes the Boot time check disk.

(It might be handy if you let me know your Second Copy settings, please.

I am using Second Copy 7.1.0.36)

[-pops-]

I've never had problems with 2nd copy but, I have never tried to get it to work with an external drive, always with a subsidiary internal (slave) drive.

Been using it for many years.

[AlanHo]

I seem to have solved the problem - things have been OK for the last two days.

I eventually traced the erratic behaviour to the existence of a sub-folder in my documents folder which contained a file with a size of zero bytes. I tried to delete the file and offending folder using Windows Explorer but it refused – stating that the file and folder did not exist on that volume – even though it was visible and being partially copied by my back up program. I tried moving the file – no luck, I tried setting the back-up program to ignore it – but this did not work, I tried deleting it in safe mode which seemed to do the job – but the folder and file reappeared on the next boot.

I trawled Google for inspiration and found a few suggestions – but none worked. Eventually I found a post which was related to a different subject but gave me a clue that I should resort to good old DOS and use the cmd instruction.

It is years since I used DOS and I have forgotten all the commands – so back to Google again to find a suitable idiots guide. This did the trick, I was able to delete the offending folder and the computer is back to normal.

The folder involved was something related to a recent automatic update of my Omnipage OCR software – the OCR program is working fine but it left some corrupted dross that interfered with normal back-up operations.

Now regarding Second Copy profiles.

I have the following hard drives....

C: internal - OS and programs

E: internal - data and documents (I moved the Windows documents, downloads, pictures, music, video folders etc from C: to this drive - also my Outlook .pst files)

F: internal - back up files

G: external - duplicate back up files.

I have 4 Second Copy profiles

1...C: to F:

2...C: to G

3...E: to F:

4...E: to G:

What and Which files

I have selected just a few files on the C: drive to back up.

These are :-

Desktop

Microsoft templates

Favorites

I have selected all files on my E: drive to be backed up and for it to exclude Outlook archive.pst (which I do manually after the rare event of archiving Outlook files)

Where

Is set to a folder titled Second Copy/backup on the back-up drives

When

Set to run on shut down

How

Select "Exact Copy"

Tick box to keep last three versions in Disk: /second copy/archive

Advanced properties

Tick...Try to copy files that are in use by other applications

Tick ... Always copy empty folders

Tick...Ignore system files

I can assure you that Second Copy on our 2 computers works faultlessly – unless there are some rogue corrupted files - as I have recently found out.

[D4\/!d]

Yeah I had to revert back to DOS commands a few weeks ago. Dun 'arf make yer think dunnit.

btw a little Freebie applet that might come in handy in the future is

Unlocker 1.8.7 or Unlocker can help

Here is an alternative app suitable for Win 7 x64

LockHunter

Thanks for all that info Alan.

I haven't given up with Second Copy yet. It is just taking some getting used to after using

SyncBack for many months.

[AlanHo]

It keeps complaining about not being able to delete files - even though I have not instructed it to Delete anything.

I simply want a straightforward backup of the files updated today - just like you.

My outlook mail is included in the backup, and copying my outlook.pst takes forever to complete.

Regarding your Outlook.pst file - have you compacted it lately in Outlook?

Every couple of months I go through the compacting procedure as follows...

File

Data File Management

Select outlook.pst

Settings

Compact now

I just did it. The file size before compacting was 336 MB and is now 321 MB

Compacting took just over 1 minute.

I save most Emails sent and received and have done for several years. To minimise the size of the outlook.pst file I created a second personal folder called "Archived Files" to where I transfer all the past year's files at the end of the year, delete them from the outlook.pst folder and start with a minimal outlook.pst file size on Jan 1st. I then manually back up the archive.pst folder file.

You will note that the archive.pst file is excluded from the Second Copy profile to minimise the time to take back-ups.

At present my Outlook personal folder sizes are :-

Outlook.pst 321 MB

archive.pst 1,233 MB

I just ran my profiles to check copy time and it took 21 seconds to back up the outlook.pst 321 MB file to each of my Back-up drives. (internal and external)

Note : I used to use an external SATA drive connected by USB2 - but now use an eSATA connected drive which is much faster. My guess is that the previous USB external drive took almost twice as long - but this is a guess, not validated by an actual test.

Regarding your comment that you have not set Second Copy to delete anything.

Any files that have changed since the last back-up are copied to your back-up disc and the previous version is deleted. If you have set the program to keep copies of old versions, the old file is written to the archive folder and the oldest version in the archive folder is deleted. Hence - Second Copy will always delete files from the back-up drive as part of the back-up procedure.

However, I don't know why you are having problems deleting files from your back-up drive - I have never met that one.

[D4\/!d]

I have zapped the files that were causing the error log with Second Copy.

I didn't want them anyway.

So far so good.

No I have never compacted outlook.pst.

Prolly coz I dunno how to access the compacted old email files.

Never archived anything either, for the same reason.

I suppose I should look into this if you think it is a good idea.

As regards your ext hard drive.

Is it the drive that is eSATA or the connector (or both, ha ha).

I have one of these Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

I connect this via its dedicated usb cable.

It's referred to as Interfaces: 1 x Hi-Speed USB - mini-USB Type B.

Seems to work alright.

[AlanHo]

No I have never compacted outlook.pst.

I suppose I should look into this if you think it is a good idea.

As regards your ext hard drive.

Is it the drive that is eSATA or the connector (or both, ha ha).

A couple of years ago I found that taking back-ups was taking longer and longer as the months went by. I determined that it was because my outlook.pst file was growing larger - due in no small measure to my practice of keeping copies of all Emails and attachments. I am one of those people who find it difficult to throw anything away - even the odd Email from Auntie Aggie about her latest medical condition. Thus was born the idea to set up an archive of old stuff on a sperate pst file which I back-up annually. I do not transfer messages into the archive folder during the year - just at the year end in a grand clear-out.

I also saw a recommendation on the MS Outlook forum that you should compact the pst file from time to time - which I now do.

The result was a significant reduction in the time it takes for the Second Copy back-up.

The next part of the story was when I decided to buy a big external hard drive. I had seen a magazine article about the increasing availability of enclosures with an eSATA connection and the resulting speed benefits. An external eSATA connected hard drive is as fast as an internal hard drive. My mobo has an eSATA socket - so I bought a 1 TB SATA 3 hard drive and stuffed it into an Antec external enclosure with eSATA connection.

My wife's mobo does not have an eSATA socket but she has 6 SATA ports on the mobo - so I bought an eSATA backplate which came with a short SATA cable to plug into a spare SATA port on the mobo and provide the required eSATA socket on the rear of the computer. She also has an eSATA external drive - but I am a dedicated chauvinist - so hers is smaller than mine.

When I commissioned the new eSATA drive the time to take back-ups was again reduced - but by how much - is difficult to estimate

What I do know is that when I close down the computer each evening and Second Copy kicks in - it takes about 1 minute to back-up to each of the two back-up hard drives. Most of this time is spent processing the outlook.pst file.

A point worth noting is that (having recently got married) I have found myself doing a lot of photo and video editing. If I have done a lot of editing during the day - especially video - it can take a long time to do the back-up.

However - Second Copy is normally so reliable that I am able to hit the Windows 7 shut-down button and go to bed - leaving Second Copy to do its stuff before invoking the normal Windows shut down procedure. Hence my lack of knowing exactly how long the procedure takes.