Corrupted Backup Drive?

[David Richards]

I recently swapped my backup hard drive connected to USB C to save the backup to my PC and start a fresh backup (to remove any modified files).

My Windows 10 PC told me there was something wrong with the drive and would I like it to correct it (can't remember the exact wording). I decided not to and found I could read the disc anyway.

Is this connected to FAT32 formatting, and if so did I do the right thing in rejecting the "correction"?

If this is due to FAT32 formatting, why does windows not just say that the formatting is considered obsolete?

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi David,

YES you did the correct thin in denying Windows the oppertunity to "correct" the drive. It is indeed due to the fact that it is FAT32 formatted, which, although windows can usd it does not support.

Fred

[Rik]

It’s not that FAT 32 is obsolete. It is old but offers compatibility with several operating systems.

[Mark Fishman]

It has NOTHING to do with the drive being formatted with FAT32. It has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that the B2 does not "eject" or "unmount" the disk when you unplug it from the B2, even if you have powered the B2 off first.

The drive is still marked internally as being mounted to another system. So Windows says there's a problem, and offers to scan it and correct any problems. Yu can scan it and you will find that there are no problems. Or you can ignore it, and when you properly disconnect the drive from Windows, Windows will mark it as unmounted.

FAT32 is not the problem.

[David Richards]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for that. As I now have two full backups, I'll test out allowing Windows to do its scan.

The question is why does the B2 not mount and unmount the drive (I did do a Save before switching off the B2 and unplugging the drive). Also, is there an unmount command hidden in the menu?

@RikI did not mean to say that FAT32 is obsolete, rather it is the sort of thing that Microsoft would say having decided to no longer support it.

DR

[Mark Fishman]

Unmounting -- or, in Windows parlance, ejecting or "safely removing" -- removable media guarantees that any writing that is going on or is delayed in a buffer (to make the system more responsive) is completed so that the drive is in a consistent state before being disconnected. So, for example:

 - I have seen thumb drives made unreadable when someone pulled them out of a Windows system without using the "safely remove" process, because some process was writing to the drive at the time;

 - if you wait long enough, where "long enough" can be anything from a few seconds to a quarter-hour depending on system configuration and prior activity, an otherwise-idle system will flush its buffers and finish writing to all disks, as long as they're still mounted.

On a B2, the recommended step of holding the Play/Stop button until "Saving" appears on the display and then waiting until the clock reappears is supposed to flush all buffered information to disk. (It also saves other configuration information that you might have changed, such as radio presets.) There's no "shutdown" command, as there is on a Windows system, or on more general-purpose (and larger) Linux systems. There is an unmount command, but it's not accessible from the menus or the web UI: you'd have to log in to the B2 remotely using ssh and know how to use the unmount command from the command prompt.

If you connect a storage device (e.g., a disk or thumb drive) to the B2, it is mounted automatically. That also happens on my Blu-Ray player, by the way, so I can connect a thumb drive to the player's USB jack and play music or videos through my television. But there's no unmount command on the Blu-Ray player, so after turning off the player, if I plug that thumb drive into my computer I get EXACTLY the same warning message about it that I get from a disk that's been plugged into my B2. I haven't tried pulling out the thumb drive from my Blu-Ray player while the power is on, because apparently the player does write to the drive (no idea why) and I want to be sure that's not happening when I pull out the drive.

Anyway, the point is that if you are careful about ensuring that all data has been written, and no writes are happening, disconnecting the drive without unmounting it is generally safe. It just leaves the drive marked as if it's been connected and not "properly" disconnected. The scan that Windows offers to do will verify that there are no other errors, and when you remove the drive from Windows properly it will be properly marked as such. If you're correct that the drive has no other errors, you can safely skip the scan.

As to why there's no readily accessible "unmount" command: in my cynical-and-realistic opinion, it's because some idiot would use it to unmount the internal disk and/or SD card and then complain that his B2 isn't functioning correctly. I am both cynical and relaistic, I think, because when I was doing computer support at a research lab, I had to clean up after a user who "wondered what would happen if he removed power from the computer while it was writing to disk", and before that when I was working for a consumer-electronics firm I had a script to follow if a customer hadn't plugged in his product but couldn't understand why it wasn't working.

You can't make this stuff up. Pulling the power from a spinning disk drive while it writes trashes the entire disk, making it unrecoverable, and apparently we're not allowed to ask a customer to check that the plug is in a wall socket. If Brennan gave everyone an easy way to unmount a disk, I'm convinced someone would use it "just because". Why do you think the makers of power lawn-mowers have to tell people not to use them as hedge trimmers, the makers of clothes irons have to tell people not to iron their clothes while wearing them, and you can't get really hot coffee at a restaurant anymore?

We live in a world where those are now rhetorical questions...

[David Richards]

I forgot to mention, the other drive that already had an earlier backup. when connected to the B2, was not recognised by the B2.This wasn't a problem , as I intended to reformat the drive to produce a full clean backup. I formatted the drive on the B2 and it was then recognised. This is strange, and I'm assuming that I previously allowed Windows to "correct" the drive, but that would be so long ago that I can't remember.

DR

[PMB]

Hi David,

Have you managed to do a full backup now?

Paul

Brennan Support.

[David Richards]

Yes, I have two full Backups (sorry, Exports). It's not the re-ripping I would hate as much as the re-entering of missing track data.

DR