Hi, I am planning to purchase a 2.5-inch HDD. If I connect it to my computer using a SATA to USB adapter instead of directly to the computer’s SATA, can it somehow affect the result of this scan?
I apologize for my ignorance but I couldn’t find an answer to this question anywhere
Well, as I’m coming in here, I see two “no’s,” a “maybe” and I came to say “absolutely fucking yes” because I’ve lost hours to a couple cheap shitty usb-sata cables that did all kinds of weird stupid shit that immediately disappeared after I replaced the cables. So, “maybe” but “absolutely fucking yes.”
That won’t cause bad sectors though, that just means the data you were writing was bad.
Probably not.
However, not all USB to SATA adapters support SMART, so even if there is a bad sector that gets remapped by the HDD on-the-fly (and thus does not show up in the software scan), you may not find out easily
Should be fine. Think of all the usb storage devices like senate and western digital. They all operate with a very similar adapter. The firmware on the drive should mark bad sectors not the interface that connects it.
Any poor quality connector can affect a sector scan and drive performance. Doesn’t matter if it’s connected to a corroded usb port or a bent internal sata, at the end of the day if you’re getting disk errors it’s best to measure using two methodologies/data pathways.
Not under normal circumstances. I had some issues recovering damaged harddisks that had lots of errors and retries and sometimes either the USB adapter or the mainboard SATA would crap out or handle it better. But for normal copying of HDDs, both should copy the exact same data.
I second this, when a drive shits the bed a sata controller handles it better, some times with a USB adapter you mess the whole bus up and need a reboot of the machine (from using them on windows experience)
What you’re describing is data TRANSFER. Bad sector detection and management is done by the drive controller firmware.
If I connect it to my computer using a SATA to USB adapter instead of directly to the computer’s SATA, can it somehow affect the result of this scan?
It depends on how much power the disk requires and how much power the USB port can deliver. Also note that USB-A is the worst connector out there when it comes to mechanical reliability - it only takes a finger on the plug to screw whatever data transfer is going on.
For external disks (both 2.5 and 3.5") I’ve a bunch of this powered USB disk enclosures. They’ve a good chip, are made of metal and a USB-B 3 port. You can connect those to any USB-A device and you’ll know that only one side might fail… if you’ve USB-C a cable like this tends to be more reliable.
Another good option, if you’ve USB-C and you want something more portable is to get a USB-C disk enclosure as those will be able to deliver more power and be more reliable.
PS: avoid whatever garbage Orico is selling, Inateck is much better.
first off, if you plan to scan the storage for bad “sectors”, that’s gonna take eons if the disk is of any considerable size. what’s more likely is you running the SMART self-test and that will work over any medium.
the cables absolutely can and do cause corruption, whether it’s plain SATA-SATA cables or the USB-SATA with their own controller on it; however, if you don’t have reason to suspect this particular cable/adapter is faulty, it’s not a worry vector per se.
If the USB port doesn’t provide enough power constantly it might have an influence. If you are on a desktop type computer use the ports on the back that are directly connected to the main board.
Should be fine, just don’t cheap out on the external drive / cable you will be using. And when you’re using something like smartctl you’ll know right away if SMART info is passing through your USB for proper testing.
I’ve done a lot of these type of scans via USB drives, honestly the more annoying part is that some USB drives do wonky things like go into sleep mode within 1-5 minutes which will disrupt any sort of scanning you had going. So with USB drive scanning I usually implement something to keep the drive alive and awake e.g. a simple infinite loop script to write a file every x seconds, or if you’re on windows you can also use KeepAliveHD.
A simple scan is fine, but to actually image a dying drive for recovery purposes, you should absolutely be doing a direct connection
