Author Topic: My External HD died X( (Read 5605 times)

BuriaL · « **on:** December 22, 2008, 10:37:12 AM »

As my old External HD got full i bought a new one. Now after about a month, it suddenly died when i connected it to the computer.
As i plugged the usb into the computer it made a "POP!" sound, after that its been dead.

After having this one literaly pop, id say its a verry bad investment.
WD Elements Desktop 1TB

I lost about 750GB of movies and series.
Guess in the end i cant complain about loosing "stolen" stuff, and ive seen most of it anyways. I still feel really angry at WD for theyre crappy craftmanship tho.

Manic88 · « **Reply #1 on:** December 22, 2008, 12:47:20 PM »

Ouch!

I've been using a WD Passport 120GB for about a year and a half now and *touch wood* it's been fine and I hardly treat it fair. It bounces around my bag all over the place when I'm at UNI.

Although when I was reading reviews about it before I brought it they apparently had the habit of just failing. For me to lose any data though my HDD and my WD passport would both have to fail. Even then I still have a back up of vital vital files.

I get your point though man. You have an external HD to back up what you can't fit on your HDD and for it to just pop a month after purchase is ridiculous and even if you send it back and they send you a new one it ain't exactly easy to get all the data back. Especially if you had holiday pics or other stuff backed up on it.

Sorry to hear it.

vuzedome · « **Reply #2 on:** December 22, 2008, 12:53:12 PM »

of all the external hdd failures i've heard of, this is the first one that makes a ''POP'' sound, usually it makes a weird grinding sound and then dies down.

iindigo · « **Reply #3 on:** December 22, 2008, 12:55:40 PM »

Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, HDs with capacities of 500GB+ are much more likely to fail. That's not good, considering HDs are pretty failure-prone to begin with...

I know your pain, though. Almost a year ago now, my iMac's internal 250GB decided to just hump up and die on me for no particular reason. It contained everything I've worked on since 2001, my entire music collection, and all my anime. I was about to have a heart attack. Luckily, however, I had backed the entire HD up on my external only three or four days before that, so I ended up losing only a few WoW screenshots. Ever since then I've incredibly thankful that the impulse to back up hit me that day...

IceRiccy · « **Reply #4 on:** December 22, 2008, 01:23:34 PM »

I had my laptops internal hd die on me a week after i bought the laptop. Ive had more drives fail on me, but never a external one (knocks 3x on a the table) ive lost over well 500 gb worth of data thanks to this. some critical files aswell. thats why i make backup copies on disks these days of real critical files =/

but got to admit hearing a plop sound is new.

mgz · « **Reply #5 on:** December 22, 2008, 01:27:55 PM »

i personally will stick with buying internal HDDs and using docks to use them so they can remain unplugged and out of harms way when i dont need them

flow.of.soul · « **Reply #6 on:** December 22, 2008, 01:32:05 PM »

SpinRite is supposed to work wonders when it comes to recovering drives. It wouldnt hurt to try it.

Slykester · « **Reply #7 on:** December 22, 2008, 01:42:27 PM »

You should also consider the possibility that (hopefully) the enclosure is where the failure occurred. If it's possible to open the enclosure without invalidating any warranty tags, try hooking the hard-drive up to your computer directly. I had this occur to a friend recently, all that was needed was a new enclosure. Of course this really only helps if you have stuff on the drive that you don't want to lose.

mgz · « **Reply #8 on:** December 22, 2008, 01:59:22 PM »

usually a pop sound isnt good with computer parts

relic2279 · « **Reply #9 on:** December 22, 2008, 02:53:13 PM »

I have had nothing but bad luck with storage on a hard drive. My hard drives go bad on me every 2-3 years. I've tried low end, high end, seagate, WD, Maxtor, all eventually die on me. So after my 3rd hard drive died on me, I've just been backing everything up on DVD's and taking very good care of them. I know it's not as cost efficient, but I won't have to worry about losing a TB of anime if a DVD goes bad. I need to find a better solution but I still don't trust the reliability yet.

iindigo · « **Reply #10 on:** December 22, 2008, 02:56:09 PM »

Quote from: relic2279 on December 22, 2008, 02:53:13 PM

I have had nothing but bad luck with storage on a hard drive. My hard drives go bad on me every 2-3 years. I've tried low end, high end, seagate, WD, Maxtor, all eventually die on me. So after my 3rd hard drive died on me, I've just been backing everything up on DVD's and taking very good care of them. I know it's not as cost efficient, but I won't have to worry about losing a TB of anime if a DVD goes bad. I need to find a better solution but I still don't trust the reliability yet.

Are you constantly reading and writing to/from your HDs? It sounds like they're being tortured to die that easily.

Lupin · « **Reply #11 on:** December 22, 2008, 02:59:35 PM »

most probably the thing in the drive that popped is a dielectric capacitor that is not found on the drive itself but on the enclosure. the capacitor is used for regulating the power supplied to the drive.

like what sylkester mentioned, if you can connect the drive directly to the computer or to another enclosure, there is a good chance that the files can be recovered.

relic2279 · « **Reply #12 on:** December 22, 2008, 03:04:12 PM »

Quote from: iindigo on December 22, 2008, 02:56:09 PM

Are you constantly reading and writing to/from your HDs? It sounds like they're being tortured to die that easily.

Not really. Or not that I'm aware of. I used to just download stuff and archive it on my HD. But I did use to use my computer quite a bit so who knows.

Lupin · « **Reply #13 on:** December 22, 2008, 03:10:26 PM »

Quote from: relic2279 on December 22, 2008, 03:04:12 PM

Quote from: iindigo on December 22, 2008, 02:56:09 PM
Are you constantly reading and writing to/from your HDs? It sounds like they're being tortured to die that easily.

Not really. Or not that I'm aware of. I used to just download stuff and archive it on my HD. But I did use to use my computer quite a bit so who knows.

are these drives external or internal? external drives have a shorter lifespan than internal ones.

BuriaL · « **Reply #14 on:** December 22, 2008, 03:11:53 PM »

Okay, so i decapitated the little box, and connected the disk to my motherboard and power.
And as mentioned it seems to be the little "circut-board" thats shorted out or something.

On connection the disk shows up in the SATA setup.
I havent done this in 2-3 years, and i dont wanna loose data. So..configuring the disk as JBOD dont format or alter it?

relic2279 · « **Reply #15 on:** December 22, 2008, 03:22:27 PM »

Quote from: Lupin on December 22, 2008, 03:10:26 PM

are these drives external or internal? external drives have a shorter lifespan than internal ones.

All internal. Never owned an external.

geoffreak · « **Reply #16 on:** December 22, 2008, 05:03:01 PM »

I have one of them cool Drobos where I backup EVERYTHING (Mac OSX's Time Machine is very helpful). I have several other external HD's but I use them mostly for transferring things between computers and to speed up torrenting (by downloading different torrents to different drives).

BuriaL · « **Reply #17 on:** December 22, 2008, 05:06:20 PM »

Finaly got the disk to work, with data and all. Hopefully it didnt suffer any damage.

Just need a new computer to house it

NaRu · « **Reply #18 on:** December 22, 2008, 06:57:14 PM »

All my drives last for a long time. I still have my 250 gig WD harddrive in my system and its 5 years old. Its my system drive so I use it alot.

I always have internal drives and I always get good drives (I normaly stay away from WD, even though Im still using my 250 gig system drive. Also the bigger the drive doesnt mean that the drive is going to fail sooner. Yes there are more errors when reading and writing onto the drive but it takes nano secends to correct it and you wont see the difference. This is why putting them into raid isnt good anymore. Any errors on the disk will fail the raid unless you have it backed up)

aghstnashell · « **Reply #19 on:** December 22, 2008, 07:04:19 PM »

All my drives (except the one in my laptop and the one in my PDVR) are all western digital and I have had no issues with them at all. I have been fortunate enough to not have a drive fail on me yet, I guess I have just been really lucky. I need to get a 1 or 1.5TB external to do backups onto though. (my 2 250GB externals dont cut it anymore)