My grunge against external hard drives (any advice?)

[Bumperdog]

Hello internet, I have been wanting to ask and discuss a important question on this forum for a while now ever since I came here. But I want to discuss on how to best handle external hard drives and why I am afraid of using them.

You see, archiving is a important thing, yes. It is obviously prevalent on this forum and the web in general. It it mentioned through various threads on this forum and in fact I have recently read one as an example.

That is would eventually lead to me making this post especially as of now since I have been wanting to pursue on something that requires a lot of storage on my internal drive (This pc that I'm writing my post on). I have avoided doing a lot of things on my system due to me wanting to preserve storage (eg. Making videos, 3d modeling, video games.)

You see, I could solve this issue by wanting to use an external hard drive for more storage. But it is a HUGE liability risk for stuff you hold on too. You could simply have a hard drive full of precious things but one day it could be all over, everything you have is all down the drain and it as lost because your hard drive suddenly corrupt.

I wouldn't be explaining this if I didnt't had actual experience, but I do. Here is my story for you.

The Story
So one day I got myself a 2TB hard drive. I used it quite often when ever I have my computer open. But I never disconnected properly, I will get to that later.

This story all starts on June 5th, 2023. When I plugged it in that day I found out it was corrupted. I had admittedly found it quite terrible for me and I panicked to find any sources for info on how to resolve the issue.

Thankfully I did ended up resolving the issue and managed to fix corruption it and everything was still intact. I find out that you had to use the command power shell on your computer and type "chkdsk /f D:" and it did it's job.

However, not everything was saved, apparently my Steam Library was the only thing that was gone. This is not too bad as I could easily re-install my games, but it was still very concerned and it made me question and give me a hypothesis on how this technically happened.

I think the reason why it happened was due to the fact I was using a faulty extension usb port. The port kinda sucked, it kept disconnecting while the hard drive was connect and that's what led to it corrupting. But the fact that my steam library ended up being permanently erased made me think that it was the root connection that it had when interfering with the connection.

This had told me the lesson not to disconnect a hard drive while it's operating and simply eject it through the computer, hence "You can safely remove your hard drive from your pc" Windows states.
Any advice?
Ever since then, I have been afraid of using them. Let's just say that incident had been traumatic for me, maybe a bit over exaggerating as I'm explaining it, But you get my point.

I have been doing it again, but now I never have the thing constantly connected, I know not to disconnected without having things running and to simply eject it manually through the computer. I have been doing it through a different external hard drive my brother gave to me.

I could simply go on and just do it more safely with the lesson I learned but I'm too worried other stuff might happen without me knowing the issue. I know and I am aware of other things that may happen and I would like to know how to be prepared for that.

One of my methods was to buy another computer that can be used for spare storage but I'm not sure if it's a good idea.

So that is why I'm here, what is the best way to handle with external hard drives? Is there are ways to fix an issue when it corrupts, if so, any free sources for software or methods that I can use?

It would also help for a extra bonus to give me a important explanation for what happened with Steam Library. I would like to know about knowledge on how hard drives(digital technology) to better understand on how it works.

[Slix]

Spinning hard drives can fail over time (3-5 years of use is what they say, but it always depends), and they often do eventually. It's good you got your drive working again, and you learned what the issue seemed to be in the bad USB port. I always recommend having your important data on more than one hard drive location, and in more than one physical location if possible too. If you have important stuff on your main external drive, back it up to another one every so often, so if there is data corruption or the drive fails (or gets stolen, etc.) you have another copy of it, and if your house burns down you have another copy of it elsewhere too. SSDs are more reliable (even external ones) but they can fail too over time possibly. I'd recommend at the very least putting your finished projects on a second drive so your "working drive" has a backup of your important stuff. It's also possible to get online backup software solutions so your data is stored in the "cloud", but that will cost money monthly most likely.

I don't have much experience with Windows backup utilities unfortunately, but what I do on my Mac is use my internal drive for my daily stuff, then back it up to an external Time Machine drive on my local server, and I have my older computer as-is still with my data from 2023 and earlier still, and the backup drive for that computer is at my mom's house too. Many copies, just in case. (But I should still have another copy elsewhere that's more recent too!)

[Bumperdog]

Spinning hard drives can fail over time (3-5 years of use is what they say, but it always depends), and they often do eventually.

I do question, when you say over time, does that happen when it ever it's used (plugged in) or you can have the hard drive unused (stored somewhere like a cabinet) for long periods of time and can still work? Like for example in comparison, having food in the your house that can expire over time even if it was opened once.

I always recommend having your important data on more than one hard drive location, and in more than one physical location if possible too. If you have important stuff on your main external drive, back it up to another one every so often

I am fully aware of this already, problem is, I don't have the necessary funds to do that. I could buy more external hard drives but their quite expensive for something like 2TB or even more. Just to use it as a extra duplicate would seem like a waste of money. But I would still consider doing that. It's just the money thing is the issue since I don't have a job to get any so I can't really have patience if there's ever the possibility the my data may be lost.

I don't have much experience with Windows backup utilities unfortunately, but what I do on my Mac is use my internal drive for my daily stuff, then back it up to an external Time Machine drive on my local server, and I have my older computer as-is still with my data from 2023 and earlier still, and the backup drive for that computer is at my mom's house too. Many copies, just in case. (But I should still have another copy elsewhere that's more recent too!)

What do you mean by local server? Like you can have it connected wireless to your pc through a network? But doesn't that make corrupting it more of a risk? What tool you used to make that work?

[Slix]

I do question, when you say over time, does that happen when it ever it's used (plugged in) or you can have the hard drive unused (stored somewhere like a cabinet) for long periods of time and can still work? Like for example in comparison, having food in the your house that can expire over time even if it was opened once.

Hard drives are drives that have moving parts in them to read the data on the disk. If they sit too long (like a computer from the 90s that suddenly is turned back on after 25 years) they can sometimes not work. In addition, a drive can usually only be used so long (many drives are rated to last a certain amount of hours over their lifetime) before it can start to fail. Typically, hard drives have a bit of a slow death, and sometimes certain parts of the drive (files and folders) can start to not work, or be read slowly before it fully dies, but it can also be sudden. This is why backups are important for physical spinning hard drives. :)
 

I am fully aware of this already, problem is, I don't have the necessary funds to do that. I could buy more external hard drives but their quite expensive for something like 2TB or even more. Just to use it as a extra duplicate would seem like a waste of money. But I would still consider doing that. It's just the money thing is the issue since I don't have a job to get any so I can't really have patience if there's ever the possibility the my data may be lost.

I understand the cost element here. However, you can look for a used hard drive from a reliable source as a spare, or get one refurbished or on sale too. You have to weigh the pros and cons here of what's important to you. If all of your files suddenly can't be used anymore, how much is that worth to you? $50 for a smaller external SSD or something might be worth the investment in the long run to avoid that risk more.

What do you mean by local server? Like you can have it connected wireless to your pc through a network? But doesn't that make corrupting it more of a risk? What tool you used to make that work?

I've got a bit of a unique setup, haha. I have a vintage Mac Mini running Mac OS X Server, which has the capability for a Time Machine server with it. Time Machine is built into macOS as a backup utility for creating hourly backups automatically. I have an external hard drive hooked up to the server, instead of plugged into my MacBook, and the server lets my other Macs see it as a Time Machine disk. The backups then happen wirelessly for my MacBook over my local internet connection. Yes, there's the same risks of data loss with a physical hard drive here, but I bought this new drive just over a year ago so it's still most likely safe for a while still, and I just use this as a backup drive - all of my data is still on my MacBook. This is primarily in case my house gets broken into and my MacBook gets stolen, or I lose it while I'm out and about, or I spill water on it, etc.

I don't mean to scare you with all of this, by the way. Almost losing your stuff is scary, or actually going through data loss is really unfortunate and can be truly terrible depending on what you lose. I hope some of my info helps you make an informed decision on what to do with your stuff so you don't have to worry about it as much! I always joke with my family and friends "back up your backups!", but it's pretty good advice to have. :) Hopefully someone else here can chime in with more Windows-focused solutions, since I'm not as familiar with that side of computers.

[Melooon]

I've got a bit of a unique setup, haha. I have a vintage Mac Mini running Mac OS X Server

I have exactly the same setup The only difference is that my network is quite slow so I mostly use it for smaller files. I have Carbon Copy Cloner installed on the server, and setup so whenever I plug one of my external HDs into the server via USB, it automatically clones it onto one of my big backup drives, then ejects it! So Every few days I just plug my drives in for a few hours, then unplug them, not only are they backed up, but it means I can access copies of the files from all my portable drives over the network tooo! (I do it this way because I travel around a lot so I need my active storage to be portable)

I very much agree with your tips about getting used backup drives. The best plan so to have a good external drive that is your main one, then a very cheap backup drive that you copy things too; the backup drive is just a backup so its ok if it fails ^^

I'd also note that Iv had more SSDs fail than HDDs; they can handle rough treatment better, but they are definitely not immune to failing!