Storage: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before?
- 1/29/08 11:59 PM
Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before?
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 1/29/08 11:59 PM
Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before?
-- Yes. (How so, and what brand?)
-- No. (What brand is it?)
-- Not yet, but I'm starting to encounter some problems now. (What problem and what brand?)
-- I don't own an external hard drive.
Power issues.
by strumhead - 2/1/08 3:56 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Yes, my I/OMagic harddrive has failed on me before, but it may or may not have been due to carelessness.
I was using a very poor quality powerbar and one day there was a power outage... Well, after that it didn't work. I'm sure I can maybe fix it somehow, but I don't feel like it's even worth it.
R.I.P. 7000 music files. 
No Problems (Yet)
by CorkyMuldoon - 2/1/08 4:01 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've presently got two connective via USB 2.0. I've got an Edge DiskGo! 120GB drive that I use primarily to store my MP3 collection and another 120GB SATA drive in a USB enclosure that I use for D2D backup.
Like I said - no problems (yet). I happen to agree with the line of thinking that with hard drives, it's not IF they'll go bad - it's WHEN they'll go bad.
Western Digital Failed Me
by jmarkross - 2/1/08 4:07 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
WD faileth me! Maxtor has been the best for me....but that's about all I have had.
Western Digital+Adaptec
by TrackStar1682 - 2/1/08 4:15 PM In reply to: Western Digital Failed Me by jmarkrossThey've been good to me thus far. I got a new machine two years ago, and then around this time last year, I decided that the 120 GB worth of space was doing me no good if I couldn't readily use it, so I bought an Adaptec aluminum drive enclosure and now I'm using it to expand my storage. So far, so good. Other than an issue with it not coming back to life after standby under Vista, it's been flawless. And even that, Microsoft has acknowledged the problem.
Failed External drives and Good Ones
by ProToolsGeek - 2/1/08 4:17 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
One thing I learned is that the main enemy of external drives is heat. I will never again buy a drive that doesn't have a fan, and I don't care what the manufacturer says. I went through two LaCie drives in short order and went to Avastor which all have nice internal fans and have yet to have any failure.
Forget about "convection cooling" or the rap that the external wall wart can't contribute heat so you don't need a fan. There's so much heat coming from the drive itself that it has to be cooled by forced air or your looking for trouble, especially if you use the drive in a hot environment.
Now I use Avastor HDX800 series, usually 500 Gigabyte for recording and video editing. They're extremely fast especially on the high speed firewire bus.
They're not cheap, but are worth the cost. I won't even go into how much time and aggravation the other drives cost me through lost data.
Now I back up each Firewire drive to another Firewire drive just in case. Eventually it'll be time for a RAID system so the backing up is automatic, but for now I'm happy with what the regular FireWire drives are doing.
no issues
by altoid1 - 2/1/08 4:20 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have a WD 250 Gb Passport external. Use it with a MacBook and Leopard's Time Machine. No problems. Seamless backups. Easy retrieval, but I really haven't needed it.
I've got a 500 gb WD My Book
by 7aji88 - 2/1/08 4:22 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
and it didn't failed me and I hope it won't!! So far I didn't have any hard disk issues with any of my hard disks (internal and external) I know it sucks to lose all of your data since my uncle had a problem with his old laptop hard disk and he lost all of his data! (that's why he bought an ex drive to backup his stuff)
For me I backup my files on my WD external drive, but I don't trust hard disks that much so I burn my important files on DVDs sometimes.
External Hard Drive
by man4857 - 2/1/08 4:23 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My 120gb Maxtor external USB 2.0 never failed me yet. I've formatted it plenty of times, took it traveling, dropped it I believe twice, still works without a hitch.
No
by thebug - 2/1/08 4:32 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It's a Seagate and I use Seagate for all my customer repairs if they need a hard drive ! I have never had trouble with Seagate.
My External Drive Had Died ... Or So I Thought
by tonyny77 - 2/1/08 4:55 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have a Maxtor OneTouch II. To begin, let me point out that I was never able to get the OneTouch function — the button on the case that can be used to start a backup — to work. However, I still used it very effectively for manually-run backups using Norton Ghost.
One day it just wouldn't work, period. Yes, the drive did spin-up as normal, but nothing I tried would make my XP SP2 system recognize the drive. I de-installed and re-installed the drivers two or more times, but nothing worked. I know drives can simply die for a variety of reasons — the electronics, a corruption problem, or even a major mechanical failure — but for some reason, I hesitated to believe it was really and totally dead.
The only reason why I didn't just "chuck" the drive was that it cost me a pretty penny. I also had a feeling it might actually not be busted. I was hopeful for two reasons. First - Because I'm very easy-going with my hardware; translation: if a component has high-speed moving parts, I never touch or move it while it's up and running. Yes, I know they can take a certain amount of jostling, but the way I see it, the less jostling, the better. Second - I kept wondering whether one of my recent Windows updates may have included a patch that rendered the drive unusable.
Fast-forward a little. I'd occasionally retry the drive, but always nothing ... until one day, I clicked the heels of my ruby slippers, and BINGO, it worked again.
I can't prove it one way or another, but I suspect that one Windows patch broke it, and a subsequent patch fixed it. Note that I've since moved this drive to my Vista Home Premium system and it worked without having to install any extra drivers. Make sense? Just my two cents worth.
Only my internal drives have failed!
by edbrady - 2/1/08 5:28 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
When I purchased the current computer, I didn't know until I cracked it open, it uses a SATA drive. I've always used PATA, and I keep all my non-operating system files on a secondary drive (WDC 120 gig).
I quickly learned that SATA and PATA don't play well together.
So, I got one of those kits and mounted and connected the secondary drive through the USB port.
Have all my files, and haven't had a problem yet.
(NT) Seagate HD purring awy after 4 years
by pagaynor - 2/1/08 5:51 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Old reliable
by montdor1 - 2/1/08 5:58 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have twin 60GB Maxtor external hard drives. I have had them for one at least one year. With an IPOD, a SANSA MP3 player, programming packages -- and I suck as a programmer, and the other "crap" on my disks, coupled with my loose use of powerful commands while in my IDEs("FDISK that"), this is pretty good.
Failed Hard Drive
by SlamX - 2/1/08 6:05 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In all the 17 yrs of computing I had only one hard drive fail. It was one I put in a usb external enclosure. It just totally failed after loud crunching noises were heard. It was out of warranty. It was a backup drive so I really did not lose anything. Bought a new one and did fresh backups.
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