Saved My Bacon!

I'm feeling pretty good right now...Last Wednesday, I was having trouble transferring files between hard drives on my imaging computer and after several attempts where nothing happened and I had to terminate the file manager program with the task manager, I figured I would reboot. That was when Windows Update decided to force the install of the latest updates. Once that was all done I moved the files like normal and then wanted to copy some image stack files from an external hard drive to one of the internal ones so I could finish processing them.The computer couldn't seem to detect the 8TB Seagate external drive. I started copying incomplete image files to this drive in July and it had just over 7TB of data, all my unfinished work for this season! I had just started another drive in early October and when I tried that one the computer couldn't see it either. During late 2020 and early 2021 none of these drives were available and these were the 1st I have gotten since then. All my older drives still work fine. I tried 6 other USB connections on the computer and also several new cables.The light on the drive case turns on when I connect the drive and I can feel faint vibrations in the drive, but the computer just does not see it. I also tried plugging the drives into 3 of our laptops, but no connection worked.I ordered an e-SATA to SATA cable and pried the external drive enclosure open and was able to connect via the cable to an e-SATA port on the computer and by damn, it worked! That terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach is gone! The computer say it will be finished backing up the 1st drive at about 11:00 tomorrow morning.The price of these *TB drives has jumped up from about $120 to $190 and I paid $230 for the one in July. The 2 replacements today were $190. I'm not overjoyed about this extra expense, but saving all this work was worth it to me.

That's true. I was lucky to have my wife also researching replacement drives and she found 2 with the older more reliable cases at Target 5 minutes from home.Those 2 new ones brought my number up to 23 external drives, 2 are 4TB, 2 are 5TB, and 2 are 6 TB, 17 are 8TB. The smaller drives have about 100GB free space and the large ones are at different levels, all above 60% full. I try to make sure every important file has 2 copies on different drives, but I was consolidating work I wanted to complete over the winter but I had not backed them up yet. This is basically all my work since I started with digital scanning film in the early 90s and it grew exponentially once I started doing extreme macro / stacking.As soon as I realized my "failed" drives were ok, we both realized that this was a step up if we changed the drives from USB to eSATA, this would give me a huge jump in data transfer speed.My my test wiring hookup was really basic, but if I want to modify my system I need something designed for the job. USB 3.0 / eSATA Dual Hard Drive Docking Station with UASP for 2.5/3.5in SATA SSD / HDD - SATA 6 Gbps USB 3.0 Dual Drive DockI'm still looking at the options. I carry the drives in a rolling carry-on bag every morning to my lab and every evening back home.I still would like to know what the heck happened to these 2 drives, it was as if a switch was flipped and neither would communicate with USB.