My hard drive is eating my music.

[Guest Richard McBeef]

I just got an external hard drive about three weeks ago to offload all my music to so that it wouldn't slow my laptop down as much. Now I keep finding MP3s with little clicks and pops that weren't there as recently as a few hours ago. I can salvage most of these, I think, because I have about 75% of my collection backed up on DVD-Rs and such, but this is a real pain in the ass, because what if the new ones get ruined too? That Son Volt album I just got yesterday or whatever is already ruined. I'm going to go kick a chair.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I've never heard of anything like that happening. I think you've got termites.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

I'm not a computer or mp3 player quiz kid by any means, but if a decade of pissing around with musical equipment has taught me anything, it's that rule #1 is to check your connections, and check them twice. Sounds like the signal isn't making it from point A to point B properly.

[The Man in Blak 0]

Couple of questions:

 

1. Are you working with a first-gen FireWire drive? I've heard that some of the older or cheaper external HDs can induce some latency on recording and playback direct to/from the drive.

 

2. Have you tried copying some of the files with the defects back to your laptop and played them again? Your audio files may actually be fine, but you may be getting audio artifacts as a result of that aforementioned connection latency from playing them back directly from the drive.

[Guest Richard McBeef]

Some play fine, others don't. Also, the defects don't always occur in the same places from time to time, so I don't know what's up. Also, it worked fine for three weeks. This is a new development. Golly, I hate computers a bunch.

 

Oh, and I don't think it's Firewire. I just have a USB plug.

[MrRant 0]

Are you playing directly from the external drive? What if you copy the file from the drive to your laptop and listen to it?

[The Man in Blak 0]

Yikes. With USB, connection speed could definitely be playing a role here, especially if the drive's performance itself is starting to take a downturn from piling up files on it over time. As I said before, have you tried transferring a couple of the files back over to the laptop and played them back from there?

[MrRant 0]

I guess I blindly skipped over MIB's post and suggested the same thing.

[Guest Richard McBeef]

Yikes. With USB, connection speed could definitely be playing a role here, especially if the drive's performance itself is starting to take a downturn from piling up files on it over time.

 

There's only 20 GB on there now out of a possible 233. I can't imagine that it's getting worn out so soon.

[The Man in Blak 0]

The overall size of the files isn't as important as the sheer number of them that are stored on the drive. Not to get into a uber-technical explanation, but all of the files on a given drive are indexed by something that's called a File Allocation Table. The more files you have on a given system, the more rows in the table you have to seek through to find what you're looking for and the seek time for a given file (i.e. the time to retrieve data from the file) will be impacted appropriately, depending on the type of file allocation structure that you have (FAT32, NTFS, etc.).

 

Even though you "only" have 20 GB filled up, that space is spread out throughout something like 3000-4000 different files (wild guesstimate) and things gets compounded even further if you're playing the files from the external drive itself, which means you're transferring data through another medium (USB) before it even gets to the processor for playback.

 

The audio files themselves should be fine - the initial transfer of the file from the laptop to the external drive is virtually guaranteed - but the playback could definitely be impacted by all of these factors. I can't say to what extent, without being nosey and asking you what external HD you're using, but all of this will definitely impact direct audio playback from the drive.

 

(EDIT: This latency could also impact ripping files from CD directly to your drive as well, if you're backing up your music collection.)

[MrRant 0]

Well, latency shouldn't be a problem if it's USB 2.0, 1.0 and yeah, I could see issues. How old is the laptop?

[The Man in Blak 0]

USB 2.0 can still allow for a little bit of latency, though, just because it's another medium altogether. By streaming audio like that, even the smallest kink of latency can result in artifacting (pops, clicks, or gaps, depending on the codec for playback); I've had it happen every so once in a while when I set up my home recording rig to go through a Sound Blaster Extigy into my laptop. That recorded audio data is coming through the pipeline without any kind of seek time (however miniscule it could be) on top of it and it even has a burp or two, occasionally.

 

All that being said, your question about Czech's laptop is still a valid one, though, because my laptop is hardly bleeding edge and there's always the possibility that the issues I've experienced are rooted in the laptop itself.

[Guest Richard McBeef]

Laptop is maybe three years old at most. The external is a CAVALRY 3.5 HDD. I don't know what that means in relation to anything.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Jiggle the cord.

[Guest Richard McBeef]

Hey, it works now. Thanks, Blak and Agent. I thought I was gonna have another crisis on my hands!

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

My old harddrive did that cos it was messed up and was dotted with bad sectors that sometimes the music files were shifted to, so I'd lose bits of the song and instead get a nasty loud static pop. I bought a new harddrive and everything was fine.

[Guest Soriano's Torn Quad]

Crisis on my hands: everything that falls after "Neutral Milk Hotel - 1998 - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" in alphabetical order has disappeared. However, if I try to put an album back on that appears to be deleted, like say, The Unforgettable Fire, it says that it's still there by giving me the traditional "this folder already contains a folder named . . . " message for overwriting, and when I try to put it back, it still doesn't show up. What the fuck is going on.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

Funny how these things develop and I often wonder who's really behind this type of activity. That said, there is apparently an MP3 eating worm out there. Unlike your typical Internet style worm, this one spreads via USB drives. Hey, lots of people use them these days what with their low cost and ease of use. And, with email filters catching much of the malware circulating in the wild, using USB as the malware vector du jour does make sense - although I doubt this type of worm could ever be very effective on a large scale. I've heard of people who've found USB drives and the first thing they did when they got to their computer was plug it in to see what data was stored within. A dangerous practice, indeed! A good word of advice is always scan USB drives with updated AV software when plugging them in for the first time before perusing their content. Better yet, if possible, set your AV to automatically perform that task.

 

If you have a serious MP3 collection, you ought to take extra special care of it as some anonymous virus writers have released a nasty new worm entitled Deletemusic. As the name of the worm implies, it attempts to delete MP3 files from machines that it has infected. The Deletemusic worm spreads via removable devices to PCs running Microsoft Windows. Removable devices include not only USB stick drives, but also portable music players themselves, USB hard disks are also a risk. You might want to think twice before allowing a friend to plug their iPod or Zune into your PC.

 

The Deletemusic worm has yet to spread very far, but virus makers are not silly. You can bet that there are plenty of infected torrents floating around. People who download illegally are obviously going to be at greatest risk.

 

 

Hope it's not this.

[Guest Soriano's Torn Quad]

BIG EDIT: All my music came back.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Hey Czech, this might be helpful to you for future instances of hard drive crashing:

 

http://howto.wired.com/wiredhowtos/index.c...y;category=Play