5TB portable USB drive - possible, safe?

[wombathood]

I just bought Spinrite 6.1 since I have a mysteriously failing 5TB portable USB drive (WD 5TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive - WDBU6Y0050BBK-WESN). I didn't realize the problems with scanning USB drives. It is NTFS formatted. The drive shows up red in SpinRite. I even popped open the enclosure but it does not have a SATA connection, the USB 3 port is part of the board.
-Is it safe to scan it anyway?
-Is it worth it?
-Is there a different scanning tool that folks here use for USB drives?
Thanks!

 

[PHolder]

The NTFS format doesn't pose any issue, because SpinRite 6.1 doesn't care about the partitioning nor the formatting in the partitions... it works on the device as a raw collection of LBAs. SpinRite has had its difficulties with USB drives over bad BIOS drivers and even tried to work around some of those. I think there is still some issue with a 2TB limit and USB, but don't quote me on that, as it's outside of my experience.

 

[AdmFubar]

thanks for the heads up on this type of drive. building the usb controller directly into the board is just wrong. at least with an adapter you could bypass the usb and connect it directly to sata to see if the issue was the board.

you may have to wait to sr7 to get the usb connected drives recognized. i'm sure others here will prolly have a solution.

 

[dg1261]

thanks for the heads up on this type of drive. building the usb controller directly into the board is just wrong. at least with an adapter you could bypass the usb and connect it directly to sata to see if the issue was the board.

I first encountered that about 10 or 12 yrs ago. A client had his WD Elements drive tethered to his desktop when his dog ran through the room and yanked the cord sideways, partially ripping the connector off the board. He needed his data retrieved, so I thought I could just crack the case and connect the drive to a normal SATA port. Not so. I ended up using a magnifying glass and soldering iron with a needle tip to solder the connections back together just long enough to retrieve his data, then the drive was tossed.

Ever since, I've treated the WD Elements series and the like to be no more trustworthy than a USB flash stick. For my own use, I prefer to assemble units from standard SATA drives and separate external USB enclosures so that I know I have repair options should the need arise.

 

[AdmFubar]

you might want to look into this to find a replacement board.

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www.donordrives.com

 

[DanR]

-Is it safe to scan it anyway?

Your BIOS will very likely limit you to scanning only the first 2.2 TB of that drive. That can be done safely with SpinRite 6.1.

-Is it worth it?

That's a judgement call. if there is any issue in the remaining 2.8 TB, you will never know. If the BIOS cannot see that area of the drive, then neither can SpinRite 6.1

 

[Ron]

The NTFS format doesn't pose any issue, because SpinRite 6.1 doesn't care about the partitioning nor the formatting in the partitions... it works on the device as a raw collection of LBAs. SpinRite has had its difficulties with USB drives over bad BIOS drivers and even tried to work around some of those. I think there is still some issue with a 2TB limit and USB, but don't quote me on that, as it's outside of my experience.

I'd appreciate some details on what you indicate. I am planning to get a Mac Mini. If an external SSD is attached to it and formatted ExFat, I'm pretty sure Spinrite could still deal with it. What if the external SSD was formatted APFS? Thanks.

 

[ColbyBouma]

SpinRite 6.1 has no knowledge of how a drive is formatted, unlike 6.0. So yes, 6.1 can work with drives that are formatted as APFS. The 2 issues you are likely to run into are:

1) Getting SpinRite to see an external drive. This is dependent on how cooperative your BIOS is. Make sure the drive is connected and powered on before you boot the computer. Also, if you try to use an external connection other than USB, it is even less likely to work. SpinRite 6.1 works best with SATA and IDE.
2) SpinRite is only compatible with x86 processors. If you're planning on buying a new Mac Mini, it will not work. Also, even the last Intel Macs aren't compatible with SpinRite because they only support UEFI. If you want to buy a computer to run SpinRite, then I recommend either buying an old PC (preferably 6th-gen Intel or older), or a ZimaBoard.

 

[Ron]

SpinRite 6.1 has no knowledge of how a drive is formatted, unlike 6.0. So yes, 6.1 can work with drives that are formatted as APFS. The 2 issues you are likely to run into are:

1) Getting SpinRite to see an external drive. This is dependent on how cooperative your BIOS is. Make sure the drive is connected and powered on before you boot the computer. Also, if you try to use an external connection other than USB, it is even less likely to work. SpinRite 6.1 works best with SATA and IDE.
2) SpinRite is only compatible with x86 processors. If you're planning on buying a new Mac Mini, it will not work. Also, even the last Intel Macs aren't compatible with SpinRite because they only support UEFI. If you want to buy a computer to run SpinRite, then I recommend either buying an old PC (preferably 6th-gen Intel or older), or a ZimaBoard.

Thanks. That's quite helpful.
I will be keeping my Dell Win10 machine and thought to use that, booting in "Legacy External Device Boot Mode, Secure Boot OFF".
I'm planning to use SSDs, which wouldn't be powered, but would connect using USB.
So part of my question was whether APFS would be "seen" by 6.1 under those conditions - and from what you indicate it is likely that it would. Does that seem correct, or would this be more likely to work if the SSD was formatted using ExFAT?
Also, my impression has been that UEFI is the way to format the SSDs and this wouldn't bother 6.1. Is that correct?
Thanks again.

 

[PHolder]

APFS would be "seen" by 6.1 under those conditions

Well to be clear, as I stated above, SpinRite 6.1 ONLY looks at disk sectors. It doesn't care about the arrangement of those sectors into ANY filesystem. The issue, however, if any, is you're talking about USB, and SpinRite is really not happy with large SpinRite USB devices for a number of reasons. USB support is limited to the support of the USB controller in the drive and the USB support provided by the motherboard's BIOS. The are buggy BIOSes which corrupt memory, so SpinRite 6.1 has protective caps on drive sizes unless it knows it can work reliably with the BIOS. It also uses much slower transfers because it doesn't have its own high speed drivers for USB like it has for IDE and SATA.

In the end the TL;DR is your mileage will vary when it comes to USB, but the drive being APFS formatted is not likely to be any issue.