I recently purchased a WD My Passport 500GB USB 3.0 drive. It is connected to an HP Z820 USB 3.0 port under Windows 8. The drive is always cleanly powered up and shutdown with the system. In other words, I don’t surprsie remove the drive while the drive is powered up.
I’ve noticed many times now that the drive is getting corrupted. For example, I’ll do a chkdsk before doing anything else and I see errors such as:
Checking file system on E:
Volume label is My Passport.
Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure …
Found corrupt basic file structure for “\System Volume Information\EfaData\SYMEFA.DB <0x2,0x94>”
… repaired online.
Stage 2: Examining file name linkage …
Stage 3: Examining security descriptors …
Security ID 0x150 is non-existent and unused
… queued for offline repair.
Windows has found problems and some were fixed online;
the remaining problems must be fixed offline.
Please run chkdsk /spotfix to fix the issues.
Is this a known issue? Thanks.
There are different reasons why data corruption can happen. It could be a bad cable, file infected by virus and many others.
You can try testing the drive with Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to verify and repair the drive if possible.
Follow the instructions on the link bellow:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/940
I ran your Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and it passed both the short and the extended test. As to the two theories you listed:
- Bad cable. These systems and cables have been used with another USB 3.0 driver for years without issues. I would also think that if there were cable issues, there would be link failures causing host side I/O failures to appear. No such failures.
- Virus. Always have the latest anti-virus and no issues here.
I have moved back to my older USB 3.0 drive and I no longer have corruption. There is something wrong with the drive. My guess is that it isn’t handling power down correctly. I don’t have time to deal with data corruption issues so I’m moving to another drive.
Should you find out any corruption issues with your USB 3.0 driver, and if there is a fix, please post here. Until then, I’ll leave this drive on the shelf.
