I have a very old Lacie portable hard drive that I use for my Roku streamer. The Roku is claiming that two of the mp4 files are corrupted. My PC agrees. I tried to copy over replacement files, but the copying process is very slow indeed (355 KB/s some of the time.
I cannot see how two files can suddenly become corrupted in what is essentially a read-only device. I am wondering if the portable hard drive could be on its way out and if I should get a SSD instead, now that they are fairly cheap.
More info. I have run the check disk and defragment - both okay. The transfer speed is hugely variable.
Why do you believe it is essentially a read only device ? Or do you mean that those two files have been there for a long time ?
Even with a read only device, it isnt uncommon for a couple of files to become corrupt after a head crash etc.
Very likely. Post the SMART data for the drive using smartctl.
I wouldn't, they are still less reliable than hard drives.
Very risky with a drive that is likely dying.
Only because the bad part of the drive wasnt involved, pure luck.
chkdsk just checks the directory structure, it doesnt scan the entire drive.
defrag won't move files that aren't fragmented.
When doing what ? That may well be due to the drive retrying marginal files.
Chkdsk /r doesn't scan the entire drive?
He didn't say he used that and if he did, it would have reported the two bad files.
I was aware of the risk. This is an portable drive and all the files are backed up. If the drive had failed, then I would have my answer.
That I did not realise.
I thought fragmentation of a large file such as mp4 could have caused the corruption.
I should explain. This was after I deleted the two corrupted files and was copying the replacements to the portable drive..
I meant the Roku was only reading the files (and storing a marker to allow you to resume where you left off), not that the drive was read-only.
What I meant was whether the failure of two mp4 files in quick succession that had been there for a long time was evidence that the drive was on its way out. From what you say, it sounds like this is exactly right.
Its spinning disk, and so susceptible to bearing wear, physical shock and other issues. In my experience drives used as "portable" drives tend to be unreliable if you move them around.
Personally I would get an SSD. When used as a largely read-only device they have a long life. The support tools will tell you how "worn" one is as they only have a limited number of write cycles. So they are not 100% reliable, but no spinning bearings etc.
Dave
The SMART stats for the drive is a much better measure of that.
Might not be possible to an external drive that old tho. Can't see any SMART report for Lacie external hard drives online.
No, hard drives don't work like that.
Yeah, my bad, you did say that originally. All that really shows is that the drive is furiously retrying the bad sectors.
It certainly is dying, you shouldn't be seeing that.
Yeah, it is definitely dying unless the power supply is dying.
Chkdsk can check the whole disk surface, though it's not obvious if Scott did this.
Not all misconfigured FATs are detectable. If you know a file should be a mp4 file it corruption may only be apparent when playing it. All depends of course.
On Mon, 4 Apr 2022 23:05:58 +0100, David Wade snipped-for-privacy@dave.invalid wrote: [snip]
I got an SSD and it won't work. At first I thought it was because it was formatted exFAT, which is not supported. I reformatted it as NTFS, which is supported and it is still not recognised.
This is a Samsung T7. I think the problem is either that it is USB 3 or that the Roku device does not provide sufficient power. Any advice on how to overcome this?
How is your Roku being powered? I've never used one, but have heard that they can be powered by USB from your TV or from a wall-wart. If powering a USB hard-disk or SSD, they may not themselves get enough power from a TV USB.
It is a standalone Roku box, powered from a wall-wart. The Roku USB was able to power a hard drive without difficulty. I assumed - rightly or wrongly - that a solid state drive would use less power.
Or it's fussy about what it will accept. Some are and wont accept SSDs.
I know it accepts memory sticks / flash drives so I assumed the principle was the same. Maybe I should have followed your advice and bought a traditional hard drive :-)
You could always ask on
Andy
That will teach it a lesson.
On some of the modern 3.5" drives, they've changed the platter base stock, to get the thinnest platter possible. That's how they squeeze nine platters into a 26mm high drive.
They never used to be that greedy.
Paul
Will do. It's years out of warranty though!
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