Repeating failure pattern

[Sebastian42]

I do not yet have a CLEAR picture, but I have established some anomalous/surprising facts :
The last activity before those 1Tb had become invisible, they had worked in a caddy which is marked as SATA3 - I had confused this with USB3, and been trying to run it off a USB3 connection.
A NEW 1Tb SSD in that caddy gives all kinds of excuses for not working, including that the disk is not initalised, yet when accessed directly from SATA leads, does not hesitate to display its contents.
That caddy will allow 750Gb HDDs to show, even though it MAY be implicated in murdering the two 1Tb HDDs.
The new 1Tb SSD in that caddy connected through USB2, behaves as well as one would expect.

I challenge anyone to come up with a coherent theory consistent with all those facts. It has now become academic, since for practical purposes I have a solution : run the caddy off USB2 and all is fine.

 

[Wolfie]

If you are happy, please mark the thread as solved so it helps others!.

 

[Sebastian42]

My happiness is not the same as 'problem solved'. I would still like to know why two 1Tb HDDs both worked and died in 'identical' circumstances. But for practical purposes, I think I can reliably run the new 1Tb SSD from that caddy, if I avoid USB3 - only time can tell - more than has passed so far.

 

[Wolfie]

I would still like to know why two 1Tb HDDs both worked and died in 'identical' circumstances

It is quite possible that the seller sold the drives after they had been used for a long time and were simply at the end of their shelf life or they were indeed faulty?.

 

[Sebastian42]

Faulty only in having a short life after arrival - I tested both with HDSentinel and Diskscanner, and they both passed those tests before I used them for a couple of days. The seller says these are the only ones out of a batch of hundreds that he has had complaints about.
Did I tell you that the drives were Seagate and that I tested a Toshiba the same way, and it did not fail after a couple of days. A speculation does not constitute a solution.

 

[davehc]

It is the first mention of USB3/2 designations.
Coherent? I cannot give you, but , since the USB3 was introduced, there have been compatibilty issues, without coherent explanation from the mobo manufacturers. All the 3.0 ports ededicated hubs. The USB2 port is on a separate one.
All computers/Laptops , particularly older ones, have this dual capabiilty.
I am in the same position with my household computers, mostlyt laptops. I have becoime accustomed now to merely changing from one port to another when I have your issue.
You could try updating the Bios, but that (in my case anyway) seldom works.
I have no input from buyers with relatively new computers, without USB2 ports, but maybe in their case the mothetboards have been redesigned to cope with the incompatibility?