I have three external hard drives all with a lot of data on them. One day, a power outage lasting a few seconds occurred. Data on the 3 hard drives became unrecognizable, garbled… turned to garbage. I’ve been using WD hard drives a while and have not seen anything like this happen before. Is there a bug that we don’t know about? Thanks
A power outage can result in data corruption. Particularly so if it resumes quite fast without allowing for the unit to drain and initiate the connection from scratch.
Agree, so run each drive through Windows “scan” and have it fix errors if it can. Good luck…
If a power outage happens again, how can I prevent the unit from “resuming quite fast without allowing for the unit to drain and initiate the connection from scratch.?”
What’s funny is that my internal WD HD was not affected.
I wish the external HD’s would automatically shut down after a power outage to prevent data lost. Thanks for the replies!
I have my devices that are prone to this problem connected to a UPS, so when a power blip comes along the units connected stay on and don’t go off for a very short time.
With a power outage, if the read/write head in the drive is out over the drive writing to disk it loses it’s synchronization and the data become garbage. Windows keeps a journal file for that reason and if you use chkdsk right after the power fail it can recover the lost data from the journal, up to a point.
I’ve had drives that would not boot after a BSOD and chkdsk fixed them…
Some drives provide a retraction mechanism for the heads in case of a power fail. In the old days it was simple charged capacitor that had enough current in it to park the head so they would not land on the disk platter.
The only way to prevent it as Mike27oct stated is to use a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). They are external units and can get pretty expensive.
I use an inexpensive UPS ($40 model) t0 prevent an instant off and immediate turn on again. I have about 15-20 minutes of battery, so if power comes back on while on battery power, no big deal.and no harm. If power comes on after battery has drained I presume it will be steady when it comes on and no harm will befall system, and UPS will recharge battery.
My laptop computers are immune to this since they have internal battery kick in like a UPS does. So, I just use UPS for my NAS and another drive directly on the network.
It’s been a month since writing on this topic. I disconnected all three drives back then but reconnected them 2 days ago just to see if any data, etc., was salvageable? To my surprise and bewilderment, all data were in fine shape… hmm. I don’t know why, but I know now that my “digital” understanding is very weak! Can anyone tell me why data were all garbage back then but are all good now? Thanks
