External drive for backups

Andyross

I have used external drives for backups, once it became practical over CD/DVD! The drive is typically only powered up for the backup. That is normally weekly to run SyncToy for important data, and quarterly for an image backup.

I currently have a 3TB WD MyBook from about 2016. When I did yesterday’s SyncToy backup, it seemed to lag a bit in one area, and there was a warning (not error) logged in the Event Viewer: disk, Event ID 153, The IO operation at logical block address 0xb5738380 for Disk 1 (PDO name: \Device\00000083) was retried.

Not certain if the drive could be starting to have problems. Haven’t had time to try and do something like a CHKDSK /R yet. Used HWINFO to check the SMART data. Everything is marked as green, but it’s hard to figure out what some of the values really mean.

The drive is pretty full anyways, with only about 190GB free. The computer I back up from is 1TB, but there are typically 4 Macrium image backups on it.

I may decide to replace it anyways. I’ll probably be buying a new computer sometime this year due to the end of Win10 support. At the moment, may get another MyBook, just bigger. Probably 8TB, as prices jump sharply after that. It does state it’s pre-formatted as exFAT. Not sure if that is still OK, or if I should reformat to NTFS.

larry2617

Seems To Me Some Of The 3tb Drives Had Some Issues With Drives Failing With No Warning A Few Years Ago Don’t Remember Exactly Which Ones Or When This Happened Sorry This Was Mostly Seagate Drives

real_aurgathor

I wouldn’t lose much sleep over one event. However, you could do a few things, for example:

run the long version of the self test routine
run a surface test, either just read (non-destructive) or write-read (destructive)
wait until you get another external HDD, then test the 3 TB HDD

I usually rum surface tests from HD Tune Pro, but thee are a number of other comparable utilities. They may take a significant amount of time, but I always thoroughly test any HDD before actually using. Some years ago I bought a brand new, shrink wrapped 1,5 TB HDD and it failed full format – would always abort around 75% completion.

Right now, I’m actually running a full surface test on a 16 TB refurbished Exos X18 HDD, currently in the verify phase of the random fill test. It will probably take another week to complete everything.

Andyross

I do have the new drive. Since it is being used for backups, should I reformat it to NTFS? I would think that it’s more robust in case of a problem.

real_aurgathor

Andyross

Yes for Windows only use, although unless you use encryption, you are not likely to get much actual benefits.

real_aurgathor Right now, I’m actually running a full surface test on a 16 TB refurbished Exos X18 HDD, currently in the verify phase of the random fill test. It will probably take another week to complete everything.

Everything finished yesterday evening, and the drive got a sticker saying: “Fully verified: 03/20/2025”

BTW, modern drives usually have 3 built in self tests: short, long, and conveyance, and the long test took about 22 hours to complete on that drive vs. projected slightly less than 24. 🙃

Andyross

Did get it set up and running. No issues copying from the old to the new as far as I can tell. Peaked around 140MB/s or so on large files (both drives probably plugged into the same USB controller.) Did decide to get rid of some old junk, like a copy of Windows.old from a WIn10 1909 update. My only complaint is that there is no power/drive activity light. ☹

Andyross

Just to add that after checking a few things, this computer only has two USB 3.1 ports. One is USB-A and had the old drive plugged into it. The other is USB-C. I had the new drive plugged into a regular USB 3.0 port as the cable is USB-A. I have since moved the new drive over to the 3.1 port.