Odd USB behaviour

I run a system with numerous external and portable drives connected to
it. Four of the portables are connected via a powered USB 2 four port
adapter. That's usually let unplugged from oc and powered down so the
four portables are not used all the time but instead for various
backups.

Today with 4 usb externals already connected I plugged in the external
hub and gave it power. All four portables came alive and were given
their assigned drive letters.

What's odd is that one of the externals became very flaky. One directory
became empty and a second was missing half the files in it. On top of
that programs, even copying started giving error messages trying to use
the drive. Under properties/Tools/Check Drive would not even start.

All the pother drives were fine. Only thing to different I can think of
to note is the one drive went flaky is a 3TB so uses GPT.

A reboot and all seems well with Chkdsk reporting no errors and all
files seem accessible but it does leave one wondering WTF!!!

I didn't panic but only because I keep two copies of the two folders on
the drive on a second drive (and dvd although not so "cleaned up"), one
is 600+ live concerts and the second is over 125,000 full cd's so it'd
still be a pain to put it all back from a backup. Crystal Disk Info
reports no SMART issues so I assume all's well but I'll keep fingers
crossed

On 18-6-2018 4:01, pjp wrote:


I run a system with numerous external and portable drives connected to
it. Four of the portables are connected via a powered USB 2 four port
adapter. That's usually let unplugged from oc and powered down so the
four portables are not used all the time but instead for various
backups.

Today with 4 usb externals already connected I plugged in the external
hub and gave it power. All four portables came alive and were given
their assigned drive letters.

What's odd is that one of the externals became very flaky. One directory
became empty and a second was missing half the files in it. On top of
that programs, even copying started giving error messages trying to use
the drive. Under properties/Tools/Check Drive would not even start.

All the pother drives were fine. Only thing to different I can think of
to note is the one drive went flaky is a 3TB so uses GPT.

A reboot and all seems well with Chkdsk reporting no errors and all
files seem accessible but it does leave one wondering WTF!!!

I didn't panic but only because I keep two copies of the two folders on
the drive on a second drive (and dvd although not so "cleaned up"), one
is 600+ live concerts and the second is over 125,000 full cd's so it'd
still be a pain to put it all back from a backup. Crystal Disk Info
reports no SMART issues so I assume all's well but I'll keep fingers
crossed

Sounds like spinup is interfering with correct power up.
A reboot avoids the spinup time problem, they are already spinning.