Did I damage either/or both my ipod and/or my new external HD?

[johnyparko]

I was copying songs from my external HD into my ipod when my computer decided to restart (automatic windows update) on its own.. I noticed my applications, folders etc were closing so I immediatly tried to "cancel" the copying transfer window but I am not sure if I made it in time to actually cancel it before my system shut off.  My question is, did this damage either or both my ipod and the external hd?  Someone told me before that if a hard drive is "writing" as opposed to "reading" when something like a restart or shut off happens, you might damage the hard drive.  Upon windows restarting, I checked both the ipod and the hard drive to see if it still works and it does.  But I did notice that the ipod seems a bit "sluggish" when I try to access folders.. Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.

JP

[Llorean]

When windows properly shuts down/restarts like that, it should cancel the write and properly stop all attached drives anyway. There should be no negative side effects from what happened.

[johnyparko]

Thanks for the very quick reply!  So pretty much, if you OR windows update properly restart/shutdown (ie, you dont manually power off the computer with the power switch) the system, it will stop the transfer on its own with no damage to the attached devices?  I appreciate your help!  Im just super paranoid that I somehow bricked my ipod and my external hd .

[Llorean]

Assuming windows is working properly, yes, it should.

[gozirra]

Assuming windows is working properly, yes, it should.

heh talk about an oxymoron

But yes he is right, in a perfect world, windows cancels all operations prior to restarting.  Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world and sometimes things still go astray on our computers.  You could run a scandisk (win 98/2k) or a chkdsk (win 3.1/95/NT/XP) and completely check the drive if you want to be absolutely sure.  You can find these tools by opening My Computer (well your computer, but you get the idea), right clicking on the drive in question, going to Properties, then the Tools tab.  Good luck!