Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: External Hard Drive Data Error

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Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 03-13-2008, 12:58 AM:

I have just spend many weeks capturing my old VHS home movies onto the PC. I purchased a Lacie 360gig external USB hard drive and transfered all files to that for storage.

I have just tried to make up a DVD of some of the files, the DVD software kept freezing . I tried to access the files from the Lacie drive an error "Cyclic Redundancy Check" came up . I am not able to transfer and access the files, I have had a look around and have not been able to find a simple answer to my problem , Am I f**ked or can I still retrive the data ?

I am also curious as to if this error is the fault of the hard drive ?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-13-2008, 06:54 AM:

When you say 'access', are you trying to open them with an application or copy them (e.g. using Windows Explorer)? If you haven't tried copying them to the local hard drive and burning them to DVD from there, that might be worth a go. I've got a LaCie external USB HDD too (Ebuyer were selling the 600gb ones off stupidly cheaply, because they've only got a USB interface and no IEEE1394), and Adobe Premiere starts playing silly buggers if I try to import a file into a project directly from it. If you move the timeline position more than about 2-3 minutes into the video, it just freezes and the only way to get out is to terminate Premiere with the task manager. I suspect this is because the transfer speed through the USB wire simply isn't fast enough for Premiere to be able to work through it in real time. Copy the files to one of the internal winnies and everything is fine.

If that doesn't solve the problem, have you tried plugging the drive into another computer and seeing if you can copy the files from it that way? If you still have no luck with that, I'm afraid it's starting to look like the data on the HDD is corrupted in some way. In that scenario you could try a disc rescue utility (Iolo System Mechanic, which I use as a general maintenance suite, has one, but thankfully I've never had to use it), which might be able to get some of the files back for you. But failing that too, I'm afraid that it is starting to look like you're slightly buggered.

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 03-13-2008, 07:54 AM:

I haven't tried the drive in another PC but i will try, as for the files on this Lacie drive , they are .AVI , they will not open with a media player , and when trying to copy them to another drive I get that Cyclic error same as if i try to burn them.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-13-2008, 11:02 AM:

I could be wrong, but I think the problem lies in the USB 2.0 connection with the external hard disc.

Can this external drive be connected via IEEE-1394 "Firewire" 400 or 800? You will get better sustained input/output bandwidth using Firewire versus USB 2.0. The new eSATA standard is even better, although not many desktop computers or notebooks support such connections.

Your best results are going to be obtained by copying the video files you want to burn onto a local hard disc installed in the computer. Unfortunately, that's not much help if you can't even copy the files from the external hard disc at all.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-13-2008, 01:28 PM:

quote: Phil Blake
...and when trying to copy them to another drive I get that Cyclic error same as if i try to burn them.

Ahh... sorry to break the news, but that doesn't sound good. Agreed with Bobby - this could be a glitch with the USB hardware, firmware or drivers at either end. Depending on what codec was used for the AVIs, if it's one with a higher bitrate than can be piped through a USB2.0 in real time, then that might explain why you'd get errors trying to open it with an application. But it wouldn't explain why you can't do a straight drag-and-drop copy, because Windows would just copy it from A to B at whatever transfer speed the USB interface gives it.

If the drive and the PC both have an IEEE1394 (FireWire or iLink) port, try using that for starters as Bobby suggests. Failing that, I'd next try the drive with another PC, and then look into disc repair utilities.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 03-13-2008, 04:28 PM:

I wouldn't try to burn a DVD from a set of files on an external drive, but that might just be me thinking back to the old days when such drives weren't fast enough nor reliable enough for such duties.

I have an external drive, but it's only for nightly backups. Video editing and CD burning is all done from the secondary hard drive in my system (the applications are on the primary drive).

If your DVD software/hardware doesn't have buffer underrun protection, the errors you're seeing may be from the buffer running dry and the writer having nothing to write to the disc.

Most writing packages have readouts of the buffer size, so you should be able to see if this is the case in your situation. If you can, copy the files you're trying to write to your internal hard drive and see if the problem continues.

Good luck!

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 03-13-2008, 06:30 PM:

I burn stuff onto DVD from an external hard drive ALL THE TIME with no errors. Of course I am using USB 2.0 and the latest Nero Burning Rom.

I would guess this is a hard drive error.

[Wink]

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 03-26-2008, 07:03 AM:

quote: Dennis Benjamin
I burn stuff onto DVD from an external hard drive ALL THE TIME with no errors. Of course I am using USB 2.0 and the latest Nero Burning Rom.

same here Dennis , I have had no problems in the past. I have since connected this Lacie drive up to another PC and I get the same result , the "Cyclic Redundancy Check" error comes up when I try to copy access or burn any of the files on the drive . It looked like I am screwed.
Another example of our ever not reliable digital era.

Might go back to super 8 for home videos [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 03-26-2008, 11:52 AM:

In simple terms, a CRC is bit of mathematics used to ensure that your data is OK when being transfered. It's a checking procedure that quickly identifies when data has been damaged. If you get this message, it means that the file being read by your PC or software is corrupted. However, it does not mean all the data is lost forever. When data is transfered, it is usually in small blocks and each block is given a CRC value. If something goes wrong with the data between the time it leaves the source and arrives at its destination, the CRC sent at the source will no longer match the one that is calculated when the data arrives - this is when the cyclic redundancy check error will appear.

The above info taken from....
The software patch

Did you try it with a different usb cable by chance.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 03-26-2008, 12:07 PM:

Hey Phil,

See if this can help:

How do I Fix a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)

You can also try using Data Life Guard to check the drive for errors and attempt to fix them. This program works on all brands of hard drives not just Western Digital.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 03-26-2008, 01:40 PM:

Hopefully this is a problem with the electronics in the external drive, not with the actual drive.
Every external drive I've seen is a case of some sort with a standard hard drive inside plus a power supply and some electronics to convert the IDE/SCSI/SATA drive signals to whatever external interface is used (USB-2 or IEEE 1394 mostly these days).
You can open the case and extract the actual drive, then connect it directly to a desktop computer's motherboard.
Most likely when you try to look at the files you will find a standard partition and filesystem (FAT or NTFS) that Windows can read directly.
I've seen some that have unreadable partitions or filesystems... if so don't futz it up by going any further - get an expert to figure it out! Probably there's a microprocessor (running something like Linux) involved in the case electronics to handle the storage and interface stuff and windows will not be able to access the drive directly - but can destroy the data if you really try.
Every hard drive will eventually die. Hopefully this one has not failed. There are ways of getting almost all the data from failed drives, some you can do and some you have to pay a specialist to do.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-26-2008, 07:03 PM:

Every hard drive will eventually die, but some die hard. My father has a 1992 Dell Windows 3.0 PC, with a 100mb hard drive that is still going strong. To give you an idea of its age, it came with a 5.25" floppy drive as well as a 3.5" one! He only uses it for light duties (word processing, mainly) now, but the last I knew he was still running it for several hours a week. The 3.5 floppy drive has had to be replaced several times, but the original HDD still runs fine. I read somewhere that today's consumer HDDs are designed for a service life of 5-7 years, assuming that they clock up average hours for home or office usage: in 1991 that would have been significantly less, I'd have thought. I wouldn't be surprised if that drive has now run for three times its designed lifespan.

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 03-26-2008, 11:36 PM:

Thanks for the tips guys I will try out some of this Fix It software and see what happens.

I have also since found out that lacie USB drives come formatted in FAT which does not like large files , The tip is to reformat to NTSF from day one.

If the software does not work . . . the axe will [Mad]

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 03-27-2008, 01:55 AM:

Try this if you need to convert from FAT16 or 32 to NTFS.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-27-2008, 05:05 AM:

Phil,

All of your woes are a good example of why one who is spending alot of time doing work with important files should consider a RAID 1(mirrored drives) or better yet a RAID 5(striped set with distributed parity) type drive system. I've been down this road before myself, now all my home systems have been setup with RAID. Its no longer all that expensive to implement, RAID 1 can be implimented for the price of two HD's and a 50 buck controller card. Depending on the type of controller card you purchase... Promise cards for instance... with a RAID 5 if a drive hits an URE and becomes corrupted or if you completely loose a drive the array will automatically rebuild the itself in the background while you keep on working... you also don't loose any data. A mirrored drive system has to be rebuilt manually but at least your data stays intact on the other drive. RAID 5 can slso significently improve hard drive through-put(Read/Write speed) allowing much quicker DVD rendering!!! There is even a relatively new version called RAID 6 which allows you to loose two hard drives simultainously... the controller card for this system are quite a bit more pricy though.

Hopefully you've made backups onto some other media....

Mark

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 03-28-2008, 08:18 PM:

Don't use the Windows convert tool to change a partition from FAT(16/32) to NTFS. If you do, your NTFS file system will have 512 byte clusters (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/140365). That makes the drive do a huge amount of churning when storing reasonably large files and slows down disk access; the usual NTFS cluster size is 4KB for a partition larger than 2GB... pretty unusual to use one smaller these days.
Back up the data to another dive (or removable media) and reformat the FAT drive completely as NTFS, then your new NTFS drive will be "normal".

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 04-12-2008, 10:36 PM:

thanks guys for the input , all attempts to recover the data from this external drive have failed , I have reformatted it and will test the integrity of the drive before storing any more files on it.
The moral of this i guess is don't trust these usb hard drives ! I like Marks idea of mirrored hard drive I do have a raid card somewhere , I think I will set this up.