Just lost another HD. are docking stations to blame?

[kitamesume]

coils arent much of a problem with these, actually coils smooths out the waveform tho they kinda dislike doing it hence the hums on some coils.
what hates the stepped waveform are the other stuffs like the monitoring circuitry where when they see a sharp rise in the input(well the stepped waveform does have a sharp rise each step) it'll think its a spike.

[GoGeTa006]

I also had problems with external hard drives so what I did was just put them inside the case and if I dont use them just keep them d/c from both sata and ps, TBH its not hard to remove the side panel from the case so its not that big of a hassle and I'd rather do that than risk another hard drive. . .it was such a painful experience loosing a 1 TB hard drive half-full with anime. . .
It was just horrible

[nstgc]

That's what I use to do, but I started fearing that I would break the connectors. It didn't use to be a problem when my PSU was top mounted, but now that I have a bottom mounted PSU (due to the case), its putting extra strain on the power connectors. When one actually did crack (but not break completely) I freaked the fuck out and started looking for external enclosures.

[AnimeJanai]

I use Kingwin bays in the desktop cases.  Thus, I can slide in and out the hard drives as needed.  There's no need to open up the case or worry about cracking your power connectors from accidental bending.  My past posts on this are:

http://forums.bakabt.me/index.php?topic=28141.msg4588318#msg4588318

http://forums.bakabt.me/index.php?topic=30608.msg4636430#msg4636430

[chubbysumo]

the HD that have died have been 2- 1TB seagates and 1 - 2TB WD Hard Drives as for the docking station
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112 using USB

I also dont undock them frequently
 

edit: the seagates were 2 to 3+ years before fail the WD was from august 2011

Read the reviews of the dock your using, its an HDD destroyer.  Its got bad power management, and bad HDD orientation, resulting in a higher than normal failure rate on drives that are used with it.

[boxer4]

ahh... Well, it's a while since the time I posted... Yes I'd say those kinds of docking stations where you stick bare disks into the device... Those mean you handle bare disks more.... Higher chance of jolting disks... And higher chance of damaging disks.  This I think is even more risky to disks than external enclosures.  I'm not sure why people even consider this as an offline storage solution, at most it's useable as redundant backup... Mostly best for formatting and testing drives.
For disk longevity, I'd still want a sturdy machine to place them in.  There are some large heavy hotswap cases that can be used, but sort of clashes against the idea of wanting small computers like laptops and tablets...
Knock on wood, but in recent times and probably all times, the disks I've owned, the ones that weren't kept in a sturdy enclosure all the time (namely, a desktop computer case) were the ones that failed first.

[chubbysumo]

ahh... Well, it's a while since the time I posted... Yes I'd say those kinds of docking stations where you stick bare disks into the device... Those mean you handle bare disks more.... Higher chance of jolting disks... And higher chance of damaging disks.  This I think is even more risky to disks than external enclosures.  I'm not sure why people even consider this as an offline storage solution, at most it's useable as redundant backup... Mostly best for formatting and testing drives.
For disk longevity, I'd still want a sturdy machine to place them in.  There are some large heavy hotswap cases that can be used, but sort of clashes against the idea of wanting small computers like laptops and tablets...
Knock on wood, but in recent times and probably all times, the disks I've owned, the ones that weren't kept in a sturdy enclosure all the time (namely, a desktop computer case) were the ones that failed first.

I have never had an HDD fail outright if its in a case or enclosure.  The reason those docks are so bad for the drives is not because of knocking the HDD around(most consumer HDDs have good vibration and G resistance), but its actually the power management thats the bad thing.  They are designed to accept and work with every different brand of HDD, and run entirely off of 1 or 2 USB ports.  The problem, is that most 3.5in HDDs need at least 8w to spin up and maintain their speed, thus, if you reduce the wattage as those USB docks have only 5w(2.5w max per USB), they have to spin up slower, and the heads cannot operate like they should. 

IF you need an external HDD, go with a 2.5in laptop HDD, since they are much lower wattage requirements, and usually have protocols for spinning up slowly in place on their firmware, and running in low power states(whereas, most 3.5in HDDs do not because its assumed its going into a desktop, which should mean it always has full power).