Why W7 asks "Do you want to scan and fix My Book?" every day, but the HD seems just i

[VeroK]

Hello everyone;
As always, I suck at finding relevant information that is already posted in the forum, so I am asking for help to direct me to the proper posts that I'm sure are here somewhere but I somehow managed to miss them. I really tried...

Problem:
I have a 2 TB Western Digital (WD) HDD My book (WDBFJK0020HBK-NESN) connected to my laptop for backups. Every time my laptop wakes up (Dell 6510, Windows 7 HP) and detects the WD HDD, I get a pop-up window that asks me "Do you want to scan and fix My Book?". Windows believes that there are some corrupted files in the WD external HDD. I have other external drives but none of them have this issue. The problem is unaffected by the other drives being present or not. I tried and that doesn't matter.

The WD drive behaves normally: It can be found in the task manager and in the Windows explorer just fine. I have used it for backups with Macrium and Windows 7 native utility w/o errors. The files I retrieved from it for testing purposes are fine. I can navigate, everything looks ok.

BUT I get that pop-up every time! I think this happened since day one or very shortly after I started using the My Book.

The driver for the disk is up to date. My fear is that one day I will click "Yes, scan and fix" by mistake and I will erase everything I have in the HDD. I never installed the Western Digital "SmartWare" or -God forbid- the Acronis lite SW shipped w/the drive. I just plugged it in, watch Windows 7 find the driver and used it basically as a giant USB stick...
Because I don't use the WD software, their site is useless to help w/this; but I read strong recommendations here against mucking up the communication with the external disks w/those unnecessary layers of SW control.

Q1- How can I tell if my drive really has problems w/o installing the WD software?
Q2- Could it be that Windows 7 is spooked by the Macrium image files which are in Macrium's propitiatory format which may make Windows 7 think they are unreadable?
Q3- Would installing WD's SmartWare software (which has diagnostics in it) mess up the backup image files in the drive?
Q4- Am I doing the right thing by saying to Windows "Continue without scanning" when it asks me to let it repair My Book? It doesn't seem broken so I don't understand what's going on...

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Dahak]

The only thing that I can think of off the top of my head is

1) at one point the external drive was not correctly unmounted at one time and the error keeps popping up.

2) when the laptop goes to sleep, it not cleanly unmounting the drives first.

As for drivers / WD software, no you should not need any other than possibly the WD SES driver link

This is more for my OCD of having an unknown/other device in device manager.

I would let it do the scan, then do the safely remote hardware option to properly eject the hdd, unplug it, then replug it and see if the error pops up again.
If it does not, then wait to see if it pops up again after the laptop go to sleep.

For the other external hdds you tried, do you have them plugged in while the laptop goes to sleep as well like you do with the WDs

 

[VeroK]

Thank you, Dahak;
I actually installed WD diagnostic-only tool and I'm running the extended test. W7 wouldn't scan my disk unless I allowed it to fix errors & I was weary it would "fix" my Macrium files that couldn't read.
We'll see how that goes. It takes 21 hrs to run (big HDD)...

 

[Elixer]

I hope you had a backup to the backup.
When windows can't read some file, it is either a connection issue, or, the device is on the way out.
You can see if it is a connection issue, if you move the drive from that enclosure to something else (assuming it isn't encrypted), and windows reads the files again.

 

[VeroK]

I hope you had a backup to the backup.
When windows can't read some file, it is either a connection issue, or, the device is on the way out.
You can see if it is a connection issue, if you move the drive from that enclosure to something else (assuming it isn't encrypted), and windows reads the files again.

I don't think is a connection issue, because I played with changing the drive to different USB ports and the behavior is very consistent. That said, I haven't tried changing the cable...
I'm not too worried about the data because I'm running alternative backups w/another external drive, so I'm pretty redundant, but I want to figure out if the drive is bad or not because is only a few months old, hence under warranty.

What I don't get is why Windows can read all the files just fine when I access it through Explorer, but keeps telling me there are bad files there when it runs error check. I may have some image created with the W7 native utility that is unreadable (that another long story) or W7 doesn't like my Macrium file format or the drive os going out, as you said. For now, Im running the WD Data LifeGuard extended diagnostic which will take 21 hrs. I have 12 more to go.

The question is...If WD DLG tells me there aren't any bad sectors, but I keep getting the W7 message....then what?

 

[Elixer]

I don't think is a connection issue, because I played with changing the drive to different USB ports and the behavior is very consistent. That said, I haven't tried changing the cable...
I'm not too worried about the data because I'm running alternative backups w/another external drive, so I'm pretty redundant, but I want to figure out if the drive is bad or not because is only a few months old, hence under warranty.

Sorry, I meant the controller of the device. Even if you change ports / cables, it is still using the same controller, so, that is the main connection to the device.

What I don't get is why Windows can read all the files just fine when I access it through Explorer, but keeps telling me there are bad files there when it runs error check. I may have some image created with the W7 native utility that is unreadable (that another long story) or W7 doesn't like my Macrium file format or the drive os going out, as you said. For now, Im running the WD Data LifeGuard extended diagnostic which will take 21 hrs. I have 12 more to go.

The question is...If WD DLG tells me there aren't any bad sectors, but I keep getting the W7 message....then what?

But, windows can't read the image files you created, since, as you said they are corrupted, and at this point, we can assume that it is setting the dirty bit, since something isn't right.
The next step after DLG is done, would be to test the drive itself by copying 10 / 30 / 50GB archived files (just use winrar or .7z and use any files you have around, and pack them into a nice big archive file) and once the copy is done, you would run a 'test archive' operation. It should pass with 0 errors.
If that don't pass, then that is bad news, and goes back to trying to figure out why the data isn't being written correctly. And that would mean to take the drive out of the device, and stick it into another, or put it in your machine, and run the same test with the archives again. If it don't pass at that point, then you can rule out the device, and then look at your machine instead.
(Like running prime95 & OCCT for at least 6 hours, and makes sure those have 0 errors, then run memtest86+ overnight, and make sure that has 0 errors)

 

[VeroK]

... And that would mean to take the drive out of the device, and stick it into another, or put it in your machine, and run the same test with the archives again. If it don't pass at that point, then you can rule out the device, and then look at your machine instead.
(Like running prime95 & OCCT for at least 6 hours, and makes sure those have 0 errors, then run memtest86+ overnight, and make sure that has 0 errors)

Ehumm.....I followed what you said down to that that bit...sorry, I'm kinda clueless.......If you have the time and patience, and feel like it, please clue me in on what prime95 & OCCT are. But I know that's a lot to ask.
At least I now have a idea about where to go next.

Thanks!
V.

 

[DigDog]

W7 does this on my iPod every day. i just ignore it.

my (totally random) guess is that it sees some propertary files and thinks they are corrupted x86 files.

 

[Elixer]

Ehumm.....I followed what you said down to that that bit...sorry, I'm kinda clueless.......If you have the time and patience, and feel like it, please clue me in on what prime95 & OCCT are. But I know that's a lot to ask.
At least I now have a idea about where to go next.

Thanks!
V.

Prime95 and OCCT are both used to test for system stability.
These both run within windows, and peg the CPU @ 100% while it is running. This makes things hot, and stresses the system.
You can google for them, they are both free to use.