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Turned off hard drive during defrag = Corruption?


90sgamer

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Hey Guys!

I love Auslogics Disk Defragmenter, but I may have corrupted some of my data with it accidentally today. :unsure:

 

I have a eSATA 750GB external hard drive that needed some defragging. I had just deleted a large amount of data that the auslogics block mapping showed was right in the middle of disk, leaving a lot of used blocks at the beginning and end of the disk with a large empty space in the middle. Auslogics has a function to relocate all data to the beginning of the disk after defragmenting, optimizing the data access on the disk.

 

It was during this optimization function that I decided to run the defrag later, and I closed the program and maybe a second or two afterword, turned off the external hard drive. I then received the a "Delayed Write Failure" error message pointing to a specific directory on the hard disk I was just defragmenting. I suppose that the defragging process was still running when I turned off the drive, even though I had just closed the application.

 

Thankfully, the specific directory that it mentioned just had some nvidia drivers in it that I redownloaded and replaced. However, I believe Auslogics usually works on multiple blocks at once, so I am wondering if it is possible that other data on my disk may be corrupted. I have so much data, it would be pretty much impossible to check it all for consistency and my OCD is going to drive my crazy by making me wonder if some ISO on my drive is slightly corrupted or something lol.

 

I did scan the hard drive for errors with windows' tool, but it came up clean. Anyone have any ideas?

 

Thanks so much! :cheers:

90sgamer

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If you unmounted it (removed it) while data was still sitting in cache then yeah, you could have corrupted something.

 

You should always do a safe removal of any external drive before shutting it off or removing it.

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True, I believe the the files in the directory the delayed write failure error showed were corrupted, but I was wondering if that damage was only limited there, or if there could be more corruption. Also, eSATA shows up to this motherboard (nVidia 780i) as indistinguishable from a real internal SATA connected hard drive, so it doesn't give me a nice option to do safe removal like a USB device. :(

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  • 4 weeks later...

The built-in defrag as well as the others mentioned in this thread are a reactive approach to fragmentation and provides a temporary solution to an on-going problem. Just because you defrag your PC, doesn’t mean the problem has been solved. The minute you finish running your defrag, your PC will once again start accumulating increasingly more fragmentation with each and every use, so you feel like you are fighting a losing battle.

 

It also means that your PC is wasting resources by first writing fragmented files to your hard drive, and then requiring the defrag engine (built-in or other defrag only solution) to go to work locating and consolidating your files so that they that they are contiguous. This reactive, after-the-fact approach to fragmentation still leaves you vulnerable to an unreliable and slow performing PC.

The ideal solution is fragmentation prevention. Implemented as a proactive solution it provided a more complete solution that keeps your disk performing at optimum speeds at all times. Diskeeper is unique as it combines the best of both worlds by automatically handling any fragmentation that is already hurting your disk performance, and combining that with a fragmentation prevention technology that stops future fragmentation before it happens.

 

When your files are written to the disk contiguously (without fragmentation) rather than scattered across your disk, your PC doesn’t have to work as hard to read or write your files. Plus as an added bonus, the reduction in disk activity actually extends the life of your hard drive by an additional 1-3 years - saving you money in replacement costs.

Send me a private message for further information.

 

Thanks,

 

Howard

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