USB 1 to USB 2 corruption

[Bamabreeze]

I have be having so issues with my slave drive.Let me give the basics of my
system...XP Home SP3. 160G sata Primary bootable drive and a 1T sata slave
drive.The comp. was bought new 8 months ago.No problem with the main system.
The problem is the slave drive,it has become corrupt to the point that it
cannot be read.This has occured several times in the past with different
comp.I have a theory how it got corrupt....It is not a virus or malware,I
know this for a fact,my system is clean.My theory involves the USB
Interface.Especially with going from USB 1 to USB 2 or vice versa.I have a
external box that I have the drive in,it is a USB 2 devise ,and as long as I
keep it attached to a comp.that has USB 2,no problems.The problems start to
occur when the external is attached to a comp. that has only USB 1. Let me
say this,file transfer does not have to take place for the drive to get
corrupt,just plugging it to a comp. with USB 1, seems to be enough to corrupt
the drive.My local computer guru tells me that this should not be a
problem,just slow file transfer.In the past I have chocked it up to maybe a
virus or some weird bug,but I know for a fact that this is not the case this
time. The corruption starts as a flakey file that takes too long to open or
wont open when it used to open fine. Now this does not effect programs,just
files(music, photos ,games or word docs.)Then the folder views start to
randomly change,sometimes file names are renamed with a dos name,then entire
folders cannot be opened,then comp. wants to do a check disk operation at
startup,then finally the drive itself cannot be read.This does not happen
over few hours, rather a few months.This last time it happened,the drive was
fine till I plugged it up to another comp.When I realized that it was a USB 1
port I unplugged it ,that was 7 weeks ago ,now as of this morning the drive
cannot be read.I almost have the 1T drive full,I really don't want to loose 3
years of work.Oh I also might add that the drive cannot be formatted by any
XP means ,or by any tools that I had ,the last time this happened I had to
send the drive off to be formatted(not cheap).Even my computer guru had a
very hard time formatting the drive.As I mentioned both drives are sata...but
it has also happened with IDE drives.Like I said before main drive still
boots normally .I know this is a bit long winded, but maybe something here
will help.This is not only limited to XP,it has also happened on
'98,me.,2000,and also vista.

Getting to my questions now...
1...Has anybody else had this problem, and could trace it back to a USB 1 to
a USB 2 connection?
2...Is this a glitch in the USB interface?
3...Is there a patch?
4...How can I get my files back?
5...Any tools that could help recover my files?


Any help or advise would be extremely helpful in solving this annoyance.
I'm very desperate to get my files back.Since I do body and paint work there
might be a free paint job it it.

THANKS.....Bamabreeze

 

[R. McCarty]

Is the drive formatted NTFS ? ( Assume so from Terabyte size ).
USB is convenient, but not fast. Even hosted by USB2 it will only
achieve a maximum of 25-Megabytes-per-Second. Due to it's
inherent slowness you do not want to enable any form of caching
on the drive.
When used on multiple systems you're dealing with USB Root
Hub loading and any real-time security apps that scan/monitor files.
I use Firelite portable drives and on occasion have found that
after use on other PCs they have data inconsistencies. I wouldn't
say this is a global problem, but common.
Data transfers to and from USB drives can be affected by what
other devices are hosted by the Enhanced controller/Root Hub.
Each has their own limitations on Bandwidth and power consumption.
Using a USB drive on a USB-1(.1) connection is V E R Y Slow
and that increases the chances of data corruption.
Sometimes reliability is affected by the type of enclosure you use.
Most, if not all of these do not provide for adequate cooling. I've
seen drives reach their max temp ratings at or near 130-F. I have
a 2.5" SATA drive with a simple connector (USB) that seems to be
more reliable than one in a "Fixed" enclosure.

I don't think you're dealing with "Known Issues" that can be patched
but more of technical limitations.

 

[Paul]

I have be having so issues with my slave drive.Let me give the basics of my
system...XP Home SP3. 160G sata Primary bootable drive and a 1T sata slave
drive.The comp. was bought new 8 months ago.No problem with the main system.
The problem is the slave drive,it has become corrupt to the point that it
cannot be read.This has occured several times in the past with different
comp.I have a theory how it got corrupt....It is not a virus or malware,I
know this for a fact,my system is clean.My theory involves the USB
Interface.Especially with going from USB 1 to USB 2 or vice versa.I have a
external box that I have the drive in,it is a USB 2 devise ,and as long as I
keep it attached to a comp.that has USB 2,no problems.The problems start to
occur when the external is attached to a comp. that has only USB 1. Let me
say this,file transfer does not have to take place for the drive to get
corrupt,just plugging it to a comp. with USB 1, seems to be enough to corrupt
the drive.My local computer guru tells me that this should not be a
problem,just slow file transfer.In the past I have chocked it up to maybe a
virus or some weird bug,but I know for a fact that this is not the case this
time. The corruption starts as a flakey file that takes too long to open or
wont open when it used to open fine. Now this does not effect programs,just
files(music, photos ,games or word docs.)Then the folder views start to
randomly change,sometimes file names are renamed with a dos name,then entire
folders cannot be opened,then comp. wants to do a check disk operation at
startup,then finally the drive itself cannot be read.This does not happen
over few hours, rather a few months.This last time it happened,the drive was
fine till I plugged it up to another comp.When I realized that it was a USB 1
port I unplugged it ,that was 7 weeks ago ,now as of this morning the drive
cannot be read.I almost have the 1T drive full,I really don't want to loose 3
years of work.Oh I also might add that the drive cannot be formatted by any
XP means ,or by any tools that I had ,the last time this happened I had to
send the drive off to be formatted(not cheap).Even my computer guru had a
very hard time formatting the drive.As I mentioned both drives are sata...but
it has also happened with IDE drives.Like I said before main drive still
boots normally .I know this is a bit long winded, but maybe something here
will help.This is not only limited to XP,it has also happened on
'98,me.,2000,and also vista.

Getting to my questions now...
1...Has anybody else had this problem, and could trace it back to a USB 1 to
a USB 2 connection?
2...Is this a glitch in the USB interface?
3...Is there a patch?
4...How can I get my files back?
5...Any tools that could help recover my files?


Any help or advise would be extremely helpful in solving this annoyance.
I'm very desperate to get my files back.Since I do body and paint work there
might be a free paint job it it.

THANKS.....Bamabreeze

Can we have some details about the make and model number of the external
enclosure ? For example, Newegg has customer reviews for products, and
if a particular enclosure had corruption issues, there might be a record
of it.

If this was my disk and data, I would have discarded that external enclosure and
purchased another one to use with the disk drive. Or, if I noticed USB 1.1 ports
caused the problem, I would buy a PCI USB2.0 card to plug in and enhance the
capabilities of that older computer.

I mean, if you know a certain hardware configuration is malfunctioning,
you should endeavor to fix it.

To recover the data, you need enough space to put the recovered files.
That means you should have another disk ready to use for those files.
Don't try to write the files back to the damaged disk. Use a separate
disk to hold any files you manage to recover.

Here are two free utilities that may be able to scavenge (recover) some
files. Normally, you'd use these, as a last resort. Programs like
this try to recognize files by their contents. The recovered files
may have the wrong file name. The programs may recover temporary or
deleted files, or things you thought were long gone. If the file
names are messed up, and you have a 1TB disk full of files like that,
it will likely take you forever, to inspect the files, pick proper
file names for them, rename them and so on. The files themselves
may be damaged, as a fragmented file may not be recovered correctly.
This method has many potential issues. This is for when you're
desperate...

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/WoundedMoon/win32/driverescue19d.html

An ideal situation, would be to repair the file system somehow. That
would be possible, if the file system had duplicate directory structures
or the like. But when errors are allowed to accumulate, for many months,
the chances of a structured rescue are pretty limited.

You could take the drive to a professional data recovery firm, and
have them do the job for $500. Since the drive is fully functional,
they should not charge you a lot of money to get at the data. They
should be able to read all the sectors. It is just a matter for them,
to figure out a way of recognizing and retrieving the files. Maybe
they have better tools than the two free examples above.

There are many programs for about $39.95, that claim to be able
to recover files. Some of them, you can download, and first the
program will tease you, by showing a list of file names. If the
file names look realistic, maybe it is worth paying them $39.95,
so that the program will be fully functional and carry out the
recovery. You could spend a lot of money, $39.95 each time,
and not end up with much more than those free utilities will
recover.

This is a list of utilities from 2007, to give you some idea
how many programs there are. Not all of these programs are
intended to solve your problem. Only a few of them are.
The rest solve other kinds of file related problems.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.freeware/msg/a0750a9837c96dc3?dmode=source

Paul

 

[Paul Randall]

First, lets try to get the terminology straight. This is a 1T drive with a
SATA interface in an external enclosure connected to the computer with a USB
cable. It is not a 'slave' drive, it is not a secondary drive on a bus that
can can handle a master and slave or primary and secondary drive. A good
terminology for it might be external USB drive because whether it is Sata or
IDE is immaterial.

The OS and BIOS versions of the other computers may be of importance. It
may be that one or more of those computers can only access 32 Gigabytes or
127 Gigabytes or some other limitation that has been removed from the
computer motherboard or BIOS, or in recent OSs.

I don't know of any way for a program to query the hardware and BIOS and OS
as to what its limitations are as to USB-connected hard drive sizes, or if
the limitations can differ between USB-connected drives and
motherboard-connected drives.

Perhaps someone else will post a link to software that can do a query that
might determine compatibility of a 1T drive with all the computers you use
it on. Perhaps just posting the OS version and computer brand/model of all
the computers you connect this drive to might be a start.

I would be especially suspicious of the computers that don't have built-in
USB2 capability since they also probably have less-capable BIOSs.

It may also be important as to how the 1T drive is formatted. I recently
purchased two 1.5T drives and put them in external USB enclosures. Both
were factory-formatted NTFS, but I reformatted one of them to FAT32. Both
work well for me on WXP and Vista systems. I don't think I've used them on
a WXP original release OS. WXP (and Vista ?) was purposely crippled to not
be able to format FAT32 partition sized over about 32GB, but using standard
sector and cluster sizes, FAT32 drives can be formatted to about 2T per
partition, and perhaps up to 8T with non-standard sector and cluster sizes.

-Paul Randall