Hey data hoarders,
Running yearly backups for my small business, I am having a lot of issues with corrupting HDD drives right now. Usually, I run a simple FreeFileSync job to an external HDD dock from Sharkoon and never had any issues. This year however, has... not been fun.
I have had four instances so far of a drive becoming unreadable after being removed and put back in later. The corrupting drives appear as a 'removable drive' without any partition assigned, and clicking them will give a 'partition corrupted' warning. Using Deep Drill, it's easy to find all the data again, but it's slow so a massive PITA. I feel like I am losing my mind here, with every drive just an inch away from failure.
I have replaced the HDD dock and HDD's and reproduced the issue on a different computer (laptop) running downstairs. So that rules out hardware issues. At this point I am thinking I am removing these drives wrong - even after using Eject USB device, I notice the drive is still spinning. How can I force Windows, and the dock itself, to fully power down before I flip the power button?
Docks used (purchase date):
Sharkoon XT Duo Clone (2017)
ACT AC1504 (2025)
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Regards,
Vincent