I have an orange pi plus 2e running 24/7 as a file server, torrent box, plex server, pi-hole etc. It has been running fine for the first few months I have gotten it. Recently the usb HDD that is connected to it started disconnecting often during heavy loads ( downloading torrents) or sometimes randomly. I assumed that it was the usb power adapter fault ( I used a samsung 5a 2v power adapter ) and I replaced it with an identical one. However the problem still persist. Could it be the usb to barrel plug cable that is sold from aliexpress be at fault? 

To analyse the problem, have you installed RPi-Monitor (sudo armbianmonitor -ru) I don't know which voltages of the device are tracked but it might give an indication.

Beside that, put the USB-HHD on a powered USB-Hub, if you have one available.

 

Edited May 19, 20179 yr by Tido
wrong letter according following post of TK

4 minutes ago, Tido said:

have you installed RPi-Monitor (sudo armbianmonitor -u) I don't know which voltages of the device are tracked

 

It would be -r instead and it's useless anyway since H3 devices aren't equipped with a PMIC and there are no voltage readouts possible (VCore in RPi-Monitor is faked). So it's visiting linux-sunxi wiki for schematics, grabbing the multimeter and verify voltages on testpoints following the procedure @TonyMac32outlined over there (measuring idle and 'full load' using cpuminer to generate some load and then also a connected disk tortured by 'stress -d 1')

The regulator of OPi plus2E has no interface (I2C or such) to read out ?
 

Then I guess the powered USB-Hub is at first the easier solution to analyse.

USB ports are powered through SY6280AAC with current limit set to ~1.1A (one switch for a double USB socket and another switch for a single USB socket), so IMO if something would degrade from peak current of spinning up HDDs it would be these switches.