File/Folder Corruption During FFS Backup

[cmclane]

Occasionally (every couple months) FFS will fail during backup with a file corruption error. When that happens I must do a full CHKDSK repair on my 4TB external drive. The last two times this has taken 1 day and a little over 2 days. I can't keep doing this. Here is what I know:
- I am doing a straight Mirror sync from my internal HD to external LaCie HD in Windows 10
- corruption seems to be related to me changing the name of a large folder (hundreds of files; 50 to 100 MB) on my hard drive which (if I understand correctly) means that folder must be first deleted on the external drive and then the new folder name and all files in the folder written to the external drive - - so of all of the thousands of folders and hundreds of thousands of files on my drive for FFS to back up, the corruption seems to occur in one of the subfolders and files within THAT RENAMED folder
- when FFS reports it cannot proceed because of corruption, I close it and try to delete that offending folder on the external drive but by then it is corrupted and Windows refuses
- at that point I must go into DOS and do a CHKDSK repair on the external drive for a day or two.
- I have searched the internet and the FFS Forum and the word seems to be that FFS does a completely safe backup process that cannot (or is highly unlikely to) corrupt files
- I have seen it suggested on the FFS Forum that the corruption problem may be caused by a docking station connection - - my laptop is connected to a Plugable dock and then into the LaCie external HD

Is the dock connection the likely culprit?
How can I can check that? (One obvious way it to hang the external drive directly off the laptop. Other ways?)
Has anyone else run into a problem similar to this? Would one solution (although kludgy and a pain) be to stop anytime I rename a large folder on my laptop, go to my external HD and just delete that folder, and then let FFS do its Mirror backup without having to delete the folder first?

Any help appreciated.

[xCSxXenon]

There is only one way to test it. Check the smart data of the two drives. Corruption is caused by a drive starting to fail, the connection to it starting to fail, or software that manipulates the data. Usually in that order

[cmclane]

Thank you for this information. I was not even aware I could do that.
I just ran a WMIC command and it shows Status OK for the drives. I would expect this, because both the laptop and external drive are fairly new (although I know that is no guarantee against drive failure).

I read on the internet that some software can perform a more in depth look at drive health than WMIC, so if anyone has a suggestion on a particular software I will also run that.

But the next thing I am going to do is remove the external drive from the dock and connect it directly to the laptop USB port for backups.

Thank again for your very quick help with this.

[xCSxXenon]

Gsmartcontrol is a good option. You select your drive and there is an attributes tab to look at. Raw read error, pending reallocations, reallocated sectors are all good to look at. Youtube will have many guides to reference as well

[cmclane]

Got it. Thank you.