Corruption archiving .rar files to external drives

[tgfyhre]

I'm having an issue that's baffling me and I'm hoping somebody can shed some light on this.

I'm in the process of archiving some of my larger files into .rar archives on some external hard drive enclosures using winrar. I rar the files directly from an internal HDD to an external drive via USB 3.0. I'm using a Renesas internal 3.0 add-on card with 4 USB 3.0 ports. The external enclosures are Icy Dock 4-bay enclosures.

Here's the issue - winrar completes the operation as if there's no problem, but when I test the archive immediately afterwards it fails and says corrupt volume. I test using both winrar and 7-zip. Both fail. I never used to have this issue until a few weeks ago when it first started happening. Even weirder - If I archive the files to my other internal drive first, and then copy those .rar files over to the external drive, they test okay. It only gets corrupted if I archive them directly to the external drive. This only started happening recently - I have always archived directly to the external enclosures previously with the same drives and same external enclosures without issue. This happens with both Icy Dock enclosures with several different hard drives.

I've tried swapping USB cables and even different USB 3 ports on my internal card. Sometimes I get corruption and sometimes I don't. I just tried 20 minutes ago and the winrar archive failed - then I tried zipping them directly with 7-zip and they didn't fail - then I tried again with winrar and this time it didn't fail. I have no idea what's going on. Any ideas would be appreciated since I don't know where to begin troubleshooting this.

 

[Layback Bear]

Have you tried transferring the files without Zip or Rar?

 

[whs]

Dumb question - why do you rar the files.

 

[tgfyhre]

Dumb question - why do you rar the files.

Lol, does it matter? The point is they are getting corrupted so something is going wrong.

Which answers why I rar them up. I've always been a bit paranoid as far as file integrity goes (read too many tales of bit-rot and HDD corruption). I like to keep them archived and I also create par2 recovery files. I feel a bit safer that way knowing I can always run repairs if needed years from now.

 

[tgfyhre]

Have you tried transferring the files without Zip or Rar?

How would I know if they are copying over corrupted or not? With rar or zip files I can test them immediately and know if they are okay. Any corruption and they will fail. How would I know if a large video file for instance got a small amount of corruption? Even corrupted they would likely still play.

And since sometimes the rar files get corrupted and sometimes they don't, I really wouldn't have any way to tell if I couldn't test them since this seems to be inconsistent.

This is what worries me - I'm afraid to copy standard files externally now because there's something going wrong here and I don't know if it's my USB card acting up or what. The card has been flawless up to now, but I don't know that it's the card at fault. I tried disabling my antivirus thinking maybe that's interfering with the archiving but that made no difference.

 

[whs]

Dumb question - why do you rar the files.

Lol, does it matter? The point is they are getting corrupted so something is going wrong.

Which answers why I rar them up. I've always been a bit paranoid as far as file integrity goes (read too many tales of bit-rot and HDD corruption). I like to keep them archived and I also create par2 recovery files. I feel a bit safer that way knowing I can always run repairs if needed years from now.

OK, I get you.

 

[tgfyhre]

Nothing wrong with keeping things backed up and having repair files available for irreplaceable files. Hard drives do get corrupted and fail.

 

[Layback Bear]

Silly me thought that the less one does to a file the less chance of corruption.
I personally don't move much so I never thought of Rar or Zip to move files.
I didn't know that Rar or Zip files were safer compared to just moving files as they are.

You could try moving some sample files with out Rar or Zip to your external drives for a test. It might isolate the problem a little.

I will just watch the thread and learn.

 

[whs]

A typical Jack. Layback as usual.

 

[Layback Bear]

tgfyhre seem to know what he/she wants and I don't know how to get he/she there.
So I will just Layback and watch. If things go well I will learn something.

 

[tgfyhre]

I'm certainly not trying to suggest I'm an authority on any of this. This is just how I've always backed up my important files. To me, it seems to make sense that having a file archived with repair files will assure it will be protected against future corruption as long as the repair files are a reasonably adequate size. I'm guessing most people don't do it this way. I know lots of people use RAID for backups. Myself, I'd rather just keep my files on 2 separate drives with repair files without bothering with RAID.

 

[tgfyhre]

I've been copying some test rar files over but I just can't seem to make any sense of this. The rar files I copy over to the external drives are never corrupted. They test fine. But, if I create the rar files over to the external drive, sometimes it's corrupted and sometimes not. I can't figure out why it isn't consistent.

 

[Layback Bear]

If I may.
Raid is not a proper method of backup in any way shape or forum.
If you concern is backup, which I gather it is, I would suggest using Macrium Reflect.
Using Macrium Reflect and the PE disk one makes you can check the backup after it is completed. It will verify the backup went well or not.

whs, aka Wolfgang has a little tutorial with a video you could take a look at and see if that is what you want.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html

At the bottom of the tutorial their is a lot more information if one cares to look a little deeper into the subject.

• How to Create a System Image Backup in Windows 7
• How to Do a System Image Recovery in Windows 7
• How to Backup User and System Files in Windows 7
• How to Restore Backup User and System Files in Windows 7
• How to Restore your System with a Broken Windows 7 System Image
• How to Create a Bootable Rescue USB Flash Drive for Macrium Reflect

 

[tgfyhre]

That looks like a great backup tool.

I still need to figure out what's going on with my rar issue. I've been rar'ing up files to external drives for years and have never had an issue like this before.

 

[Golden]

In WinRAR, check which location is being used as a \Temp folder for the compression process. If it's on the USB device, try changing it to the local disk.

It sounds to me like the temporary files aren't being "released".

 

[Golden]

Dumb question - why do you rar the files.

Correct - dumb question indeed. One reason might be to conserve storage space, another might be for security if a password is used during compression. Who are we to query? Let's focus on solving the issue.

 

[tgfyhre]

In WinRAR, check which location is being used as a \Temp folder for the compression process. If it's on the USB device, try changing it to the local disk.

It sounds to me like the temporary files aren't being "released".

Just checked - the temp folder is on my main OS drive, and "use only for removable disks" is checked.

Is it possible my memory could be failing? Could that cause this issue? But I don't get any memory errors with daily use.

I was also wondering as you did if somehow the archive isn't being "closed" or "completed". But I do notice that sometimes the archive tests fail early on in a multi-part archive - it doesn't just fail at the end. It fails part-way through testing, before it reaches the last part.

 

[tgfyhre]

Just tried some archiving again about a half hour ago and it went fine. So several times during the day it failed with multiple attempts, then shutting off the enclosures and trying again later and it goes okay. I can't figure this out. It's been back-and-forth like this for a couple weeks now.

 

[Golden]

No, its not a memory issue.

Do you get the same issue on a single file? How large is the file? How much free space is on C:?

 

[tgfyhre]

No, its not a memory issue.

Do you get the same issue on a single file? How large is the file? How much free space is on C:?

Currently around 60-80GB free on drive C.

The archives fail when I zip multiple files together or a single large file. A large file might be anything from 3GB to 20+GB. Earlier I tried about 15 separate files that together totaled around 8GB and it failed when testing. A half hour later I did the same files again and they tested okay - same drive, didn't touch the USB cable.