Till a few days ago, none of my hard drives had ever failed from normal usage (one in a laptop failed after a light fighting dropped onto the laptop, smashing the keyboard and damaging the drive). I have plenty of external hard drives that plug into power points, and even the 20Gbyte one I bought 14 years ago still works fine.
Being cautious, three years ago I bought a slim Seagate 500Gbyte portable USB powered drive to back up stuff like photos and other important stuff, which I could put in a fireproof container at home, for when travelling overseas.
I haven't used it that much, but the other day I got the delayed write failure message, and after trying lots of demo recovery software packages, including Seagate's own one - well, it seems to be totally stuffed. There are scores of I/O errors, it can't be formatted, and the Seagate software says that it should be sent to their specialists.
So, the hard drive that I bought specifically for back-ups, is the hard drive that has failed miserably on me after a very short period of time. Rather ironic, isn't it?
We're pretty tech savvy around here. Has anybody else experienced this type of catastrophic failure in their slim portable hard drives?
I've decided to go out and buy a big plug-into-mains power external hard drive for backup purposes.
Regards,
Renato
Renato, I have Seagate external drives, thus far never a problem. The only drive I ever had that crapped itself was Western Digital. Probably luck of the draw, I know they are mechanical devices and hence will eventually die, a bit like us I suppose Generally I have found the old "seacrate" very reliable. A tech I knew years ago said that he had tested them by dropping them on a concrete floor and not one had expired as a result. Maybe they are made elsewhere now and not subject to the better QC that they once were.
As you probably know you can get SSD external drives now, ok more expensive, but no moving parts and I believe anywhere from 3 to 5 yrs warranty.
Big hard drives are great but when they eventually crash you can loose a lot of data. The old rule still applies, for important data keep multiple copies on different storage drives.
Renato, I have Seagate external drives, thus far never a problem. The only drive I ever had that crapped itself was Western Digital. Probably luck of the draw, I know they are mechanical devices and hence will eventually die, a bit like us I suppose Generally I have found the old "seacrate" very reliable. A tech I knew years ago said that he had tested them by dropping them on a concrete floor and not one had expired as a result. Maybe they are made elsewhere now and not subject to the better QC that they once were.
As you probably know you can get SSD external drives now, ok more expensive, but no moving parts and I believe anywhere from 3 to 5 yrs warranty.
Thanks Peter,
Actually, I just remembered that I once did buy a LaCie external hard drive which had a Western Digital drive in it - and it had bad sectors from the minute I tried using it. So I took it back after a running a scan on it, and documenting the bad sectors (the guy in the shop was about to argue with me, but stopped the second I gave him the printed out report).
I wonder what super hard drives that tech was testing?
Cheers,
Renato
I have only used WD externals and not had a single issue in 9 years ... touch wood. We have 5 of them now - ranging from 500GB to 2TB.
Thanks Lewis,
I have four or five WD ones too - and apart from the one which I mention below that was defective from the word go, none of the others have ever had an issue.
Regards,
Renato
Big hard drives are great but when they eventually crash you can loose a lot of data. The old rule still applies, for important data keep multiple copies on different storage drives.
I am starting to think that three or four copies of photos, and two copies of everything else might be the way to go.
Cheers,
Renato
For backup purposes I prefer to have 2-3 large drives accessed using an external drive caddy. Just rotate them each scheduled backup. Try not to leave them on all the time to avoid heat damage. Unless you have a proper enclosure with fan cooling a naked drive in caddy is probably next best for avoiding heat issues. Speaking as a Brisbanite used to hot summers here....
Fairly cheap to pick up a decent quality drive from MSY.
Being cautious, three years ago I bought a slim Seagate 500Gbyte portable USB powered drive to back up stuff like photos and other important stuff, which I could put in a fireproof container at home, for when travelling overseas.
Regards,
Renato
Quick questions...
1) externally power or USB powered?
2) Original cable or alternate? (The original cable may have two USB plugs).
If USB Powered, did you plug in both pigtails? There should be two, as the extra connection is so it can drawn enough amps off the motherboard. It'll be marked with a little lightning logo.
New HDD's only have one because modern USB drives require lower amperage to operate.
I am starting to think that three or four copies of photos, and two copies of everything else might be the way to go.
Cheers,
Renato
You might want to pick up a NAS box and run RAID for redundancy, then do copies on an external and store offsite for backups.
I use a Netgear RN10400 with two WD's and two Seagates, two volumes in a mix-n-match system (prevents getting failures accross multiple harddrives do to batch problems).
My externals are 1 X Seagate, 1x Western Digital, 3x Maxtors
ha ha i am usung one right now actually!
i have been scared on losing all my history of astro photography on my laptop and i dug it out today to save everything
pat
I've found if a drive is prone to failure more often than not its the slim 2.5" drives for laptops -all brand drives are prone to failure, you just unlucky if you're in the 5% of early failures. i find 3.5" drives much better, part of the problem is modern netbooks/notebooks have almost no protection for the drive & some brands [read asus/acer] don't even have the drives screwed in, i get plenty of kids at school who's drives have fallen out after they have dropped them
For backup purposes I prefer to have 2-3 large drives accessed using an external drive caddy. Just rotate them each scheduled backup. Try not to leave them on all the time to avoid heat damage. Unless you have a proper enclosure with fan cooling a naked drive in caddy is probably next best for avoiding heat issues. Speaking as a Brisbanite used to hot summers here....
Fairly cheap to pick up a decent quality drive from MSY.
Thanks Rob,
I thought about doing that once, but opted for the separate hard drives instead. I maintain Acronis True Image backups of all my computers in their fairly unloaded states, and keep backing up data separately.
Regards,
Renato
Quick questions...
1) externally power or USB powered?
2) Original cable or alternate? (The original cable may have two USB plugs).
If USB Powered, did you plug in both pigtails? There should be two, as the extra connection is so it can drawn enough amps off the motherboard. It'll be marked with a little lightning logo.
New HDD's only have one because modern USB drives require lower amperage to operate.
OIC!
It's fairly new hard drive with only one USB cable that came with it. I am aware of the older ones that required the extra power.
Cheers,
Renato
ha ha i am usung one right now actually!
i have been scared on losing all my history of astro photography on my laptop and i dug it out today to save everything
pat
Don't worry, what happened to me probably won't happen to you - maybe.
I've just bought the extra 2000Gbyte Drive.
Cheers,
Renato
I've found if a drive is prone to failure more often than not its the slim 2.5" drives for laptops -all brand drives are prone to failure, you just unlucky if you're in the 5% of early failures. i find 3.5" drives much better, part of the problem is modern netbooks/notebooks have almost no protection for the drive & some brands [read asus/acer] don't even have the drives screwed in, i get plenty of kids at school who's drives have fallen out after they have dropped them
That may well explain my issue - you get to see a lot more hard drive failures than most people would. I'm never buying another Acer, after two miserable laptop failures just outside of warranty
I've pulled the slim drive apart. Now I have to dig out the stuff I bought years ago that reads naked drives. I'm curious to see if it was actually the drive that failed or the electronics in the housing.
If the drive failed, I can stick an old laptop drive in the housing (unless it's an IDE one). If the housing failed, I should be able to get the data out.
Regards,
Renato
Hi Guys 'n' gals,
I suppose that quite a few of "you" know about "spinrite" from grc dot com?
So, I'll just say that it's the best HDD recovery & maintenance app that is out there.
Cost is $89.00 US but well worth it.
Will recover most "failed" HDD info....No probs.
As for external HDD's, use an external powered unit.
Never had a problem with any of my Seagate drives & I never buy anything more than 500 Gig.
They just died coz of very old age.
Generally I have found the old "seacrate" very reliable. A tech I knew years ago said that he had tested them by dropping them on a concrete floor and not one had expired as a result. Maybe they are made elsewhere now and not subject to the better QC that they once were.
