Storage forum: Poll: Has your external hard drive(s) failed on you before?

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.

They'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have two WD externals; so far, neither has failed, but 1 case did. Got another case for about $20, and all is fine.

I bought a 60 gig Simpletech drive to copy and move files from one computer to the other.
When I copy, it doesn't just copy...it destroys. Then the file can't be found on the external drive! Obviously this isn't good.
I don't 'think' it is my fault... can do the same thing with different external drives fine. So, it looks like Simpletech is just a lemon.

I had a western digital hard drive, a my book raid setup it malfunctioned within days and i kept thinking it was a microsoft windows problem. I tried in vain to get help from WD without ANY help for weeks. Finally It completely failed adn then WD told me my warranty was invalid from my purchase at best buy. Avoid these drives.

I have had problems with four different drives failing to work properly.
The first was with a 40GB Seagate drive that I installed into an external USB box that was to be used for daily backups at work, this unit worked for some time until I believe a Microsoft update stopped it from working, I replaced the drive, and had the same problem, with the same message, then the exact same problem was encountered with with a different drive a WD 200GB unit installed in the same type of device stopped working after updates to my home computer. I might add that all the units were formated NTFS so that drive images could be backed up, and the software used came with the external box called Vipower and Saturn box. I pulled the WD200GB disk and installed it into another computer formatted and installed xp pro and it worked great untill the power supply failed. in the meantime I purchased a WD 60GB Passport drive, that has twice lost all my backup email details, although I was able to retrieve the information using System Mechanic Pro, it has made wary of External HDD backup units, I have had problems with CD and DVD backups as well with errors like "Cyclic Redundancy" messages poping up from time to time as well so now I keep multiple digital copies of jpegs and mpegs I want to keep

I own a WD 400gb Elements external hard drive. I did not want to loose any of my precious pictures or important data so I put it all on the WD. DUMB MOVE! I did not own the drive very long when it failed to function. I tried to view it on several different computers but they did not recognize it. Once I plug the usb plug in, Windows said it was recognized. Yet it did not show up anywhere, even in the systems hardware - device manager or my computer. At this point I would like to say I think WD CSR are just about useless. I emailed, I called, I did everything I was told to do. It took me way too long to finally get a human - weeks and weeks. I am not confident in Western Digitial hard drives any longer, if they had good customer service I would not be so harsh, after all anything can break. The end result is they say the drive is dead, it does not respond... and it will take hundreds of dollars if I want to sent it back so that my data can be recovered. Not exceptable, poor product, poor customer service. If I may I have a couple of questions. How do I know what type of hd it is? (eeid,sata???) If there isn't sound do you think it is worth trying an enclosure? Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I deleted my data from my computer, very sad. Thanks - Ramona

I have a freecom 250GB it caused me no end of problems when I was using the software that was supplied with th hard drive. However I have found that it works great if I dont use their software and use it as a mass storage device letting windows xp discover it with plug and play.

Hi i'm termed as Oertel on this forum, anyway i've had hdd failure twice already, i have a 300Gb Seagate IDE Drive running in a Nexstar enclosure powered by a power supply simular to of a laptop. First time ,.. now get this "a first 4 me" the hdd started vibrating like hell. The following day i took the whole unit to the store where i originally bought it from, explained the matter and had it tested by the tech's at the store. they were blown away on the behaviour of the unit. At first it was kinda funny cause, they've never seen som'ing like this before, well i booked it for repair/replacement. The sad thing is not the entire drive was backed up, and i lost data that took a year to create, and there was absolutely nothing to do cause it just would'nt start up on any machine. The hdd was returned labeled "certified repaired". I started fresh again storing, storing and one day again after 2 weeks it just would'nt start up again, the enclosure led displayed a constant flashing but nothing. I got it started a few times after windows updates after a heavy struggle at times yes, but even then it don't last long cause, after some time it gets hot and then led flashes again and makes a strange pinging sound and then freezes up, thats it. it won't start up after that again. maybe the next day or so, if i'm lucky. I suspected the interface and/or component board on it to be faulty cause the content on the drive itself is not corrupted for the time that it works i can store data on it or copy,cut, whatever untill it malfunctions again , what do u make of this??? I have had the drive installed in other units and pc's as well, nothing. Now the power supply is to hell and gone as well, not working anymore.