Painful process of recovery from HD crash

[emuler]

Using an external drive for your temp folder is not recommended at all. Not sure why you have to do it that way, but if there is no choice, try turning off all power saving options, including those for the hard drive and the USB controller. The drive must be always on. If that doesn't work, make a small batch file to write to a file on that drive every few seconds. Just a few bytes at a time, but don't let the drive go into idle mode and turn itself off.

Another option is to put the emule folder itself on that drive, and enable logs and 'write logs to disk'. That should keep the drive active.

[mongodisco]

I don't use the externals as temp/incoming disc, but i keep stuff on them and keep it shared. Would that be a problem?

[billanben]

Using an external drive for your temp folder is not recommended at all. Not sure why you have to do it that way, but if there is no choice, try turning off all power saving options, including those for the hard drive and the USB controller. The drive must be always on. If that doesn't work, make a small batch file to write to a file on that drive every few seconds. Just a few bytes at a time, but don't let the drive go into idle mode and turn itself off.

Another option is to put the emule folder itself on that drive, and enable logs and 'write logs to disk'. That should keep the drive active.

Purely it is the only drive I still have space left, I know it is not recommended for the reason I stated. Generally, the drive does not power down - all power saving AND CACHING options disabled. I have found the problem with mAXTOR is the power design. The kettle lead is loose inside its housing ! Try wiggling it - you will see the power go off and on (and spark) - that is shite design. IF you can stabilize these connections (rest them on something) you can overcome this problem - I have found the main reason for drive failures. Also the fans are pathetically inadequate. I will nver buy another of these.

[ghost]

I like the Western Digital...

This was my only HD which crashed

Since then i only use Maxtor drives and never had problems with them.

I have no experiences with external drives.
I have 2 x 160 GB and 1 x 250 GB in my computer, so i don't need externals.

But i shouldn't be so lazy in burning DVDs' ... my diskspace is running out of space..

[emuler]

I don't use the externals as temp/incoming disc, but i keep stuff on them and keep it shared. Would that be a problem?

AFAIK, no. Your client will buffer the data being uploaded in RAM. If that drive goes offline for any reason, you'll get a few lines in the debug log saying 'unable to create send packet' or something like that, but no major problem.