Digital Files.

[jason69uk]

??

[jason69uk]

If this unplugging it did cause a problem would i have had thew problem already and it wont get worse as time goes on??

[neo_wraith]

Even if things are not being written to it...if you unplug without telling your system you are unplugging it..can cause damage, phyiscally to the disk, regardless if it says nothing is being written to it.  Its a piece of hardware, thus must be treated as such...you wouldn't just unplug your internal hardrive while your computer is still running, would you?  This application still applies to this.  Its a piece of hardware, just on the outside..thats all.  The reason why firwire and usb have drivers for windows that say mount and dismount, is because it takes the pin off the disk..remember even if you are not writting to the disk..the disk is still spinning.  So if your pin is down...It can and will scratch it.  Sorry man, but you are going to have format your hardrive...and even this may not work, if your disk is physically damaged.

[johnwill]

Actually, the default case for USB devices with XP is optimized for quick removal.  That means that the data is not cached, and if the light isn't on, you can hank the cord out with no risk.

Even if you interrupt the drive while it's writing, it's no different than a crash stopping the operation of an internal drive, and it won't damage the drive.  Sure, it can scramble the data that's being written, but a format will fix the drive.  Hard drive controllers are specifically designed to deal with this eventuality, since it obviously happens quite frequently.  How about all the times that people have power failures?  Wouldn't it suck if you lost a hard disk everytime that happened?

[jason69uk]

Hi, it says on the Western Digital website though, if you dont follow this connect/disconnecting your drive guide correctly it COULD result in data corrupted or data loss, this does not mean physical damage does it?

I have not yet noticed anything unusual with the drive so far and have scanned thru all my films and seen no freezes, as time goes on it wont get worse will it?

So you're saying that it doesnt really matter unplugging the drive but dont do it when things are being copied to it otherwise data will be scrambled but a format would fix this issue?

Thanks 4 the help neo and john

[srballantyne]

You can indeed just unplug a USB drive if you are running XP it doesn't require that you dismount the drive like WinXX OS do.

[jason69uk]

I unplugged it by the mains though i didnt unplug the USB first and i did this ages ago without realising i wasnt supposed to do it!

Has this messed things up still?

How come it also takes longer to scan files with divfix on the external than it does on the master hard drive?

Also i was defragmenting the big external drive and on the diskeeper program i defrag with it said the size of the movie i was defragging was 4kb, lol hen i watched it the movie was still the same length though and size..how come it said 4kb?

Also when doing 'scannow /sfc' under 'run' i defragged after to find a load of 'low performing system files' in diskeeper, why is this??

[neo_wraith]

actually it depends on the hard drive you buy...I Own a maxtor 300GB external.  It will give you a message if you do not dismount correctly.  I talked to a guy who manufactures and builds maxtor drives, and he says yes you can cause damge to a hardrive by doing this, becuase th headers are still on the disk.  Internals are the same way...thats why EA Maxis lost all their data and had to buy 40 new drives due to 6 power failures during the make of Sims2.  They had to start over countless times, because of hard drive failures.  Yes your data will get corrupt, but certainly, even the "GODLY USB" pieces of crap can mess things up...Talk to any true Admin who works with hardware..they will tell you to get firewire drives. More reliable, faster and will work on a windows box, Sun Box, Linux box, and a MAC.  Your data is far more safe and less likely to have to go and pay out of the *censored* data recovery bills.  As for your Question yes reformat...I do not think your drive is physically damaged..if you reformat you can find out.  It takes longer because you are using external devices.  Also your interal might have a faster fsb.

[jason69uk]

Thanks 4 the reply.
I was trying to format an internal hard drive a few weeks back but it just wouldnt do it so i used partition magic and it formatted there and i created a new partition its running ok but makes wierd loading noises when its not even being read.

If the drive has bad sectors would divfix be capable of picking up freezes in movies that sectors would be causing, would the solution be to move the files from the drive then playback would be ok on another drive or do bad sectors actually damage the movie??