Backup Procedure - A Cautionary Tale

[Peter Branch]

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I use a range of portable hard drives, Toshiba and WD, to backup my computer and in particular my Image Files.

 

In the weeks following the conversion to Windows 10 the drives, all USB3, worked as expected.

 

However, flowing an MS Update to Windows 10  the drives started to behave strangely but apparently continued to work.

But following a routine backup, with two drives connected, the USB3 connections stopped working.

It seems the USB3 Driver had been corrupted so I had to remove the driver and re-install.

 

That is when I discovered that one of the drives had been "corrupted".  The other, which had been connected at the same time, was apparently OK.

I managed to make a third copy from the uncorrupted drive and then reconnected the corrupted drive which Windows said it could repair - which it did - much to my surprise without any data loss.

 

The moral is that it can be very risky to have two key backup drives connected to the computer at the same time - if something goes wrong, which it can, the result could be disastrous.

 

It takes much longer to do backups one at a time but that is what I now do.

 

  

 

 

[Manoleica]

I use a range of portable hard drives, Toshiba and WD, to backup my computer and in particular my Image Files.

 

In the weeks following the conversion to Windows 10 the drives, all USB3, worked as expected.

 

However, flowing an MS Update to Windows 10  the drives started to behave strangely but apparently continued to work.

But following a routine backup, with two drives connected, the USB3 connections stopped working.

It seems the USB3 Driver had been corrupted so I had to remove the driver and re-install.

 

That is when I discovered that one of the drives had been "corrupted".  The other, which had been connected at the same time, was apparently OK.

I managed to make a third copy from the uncorrupted drive and then reconnected the corrupted drive which Windows said it could repair - which it did - much to my surprise without any data loss.

 

The moral is that it can be very risky to have two key backup drives connected to the computer at the same time - if something goes wrong, which it can, the result could be disastrous.

 

It takes much longer to do backups one at a time but that is what I now do.

What do you expect from Windows? Macs do it right.

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