About how long does an external hard drive last?

[SunnyDRE]

Any tech savy people can help me out on this?

I have 2 external had drives (320) each.

I have my entire CD collection, DVD collection, stuff from school i want to keep, pictures, porn (lol) etc, on them

Anyways, one of them has been acting up lately........like my computer won't read it sometimes. I have had it for about two years, and i was wondering should i invest and a new one and move everything over, before it dies? If it is dying?

And also, how long should a person expect an external hardrive to last?

[GET OFF AXLS BACK]

To be honest it shouldn't have a max life time, i would copy everything to another source, then reformat it.Should sort any glitches.Unless it has been physically damaged there is no reason to assume it doesn't just need a fresh start.

[gunsguy]

I had one just one just over a year and it died, I am not a big fan of the power sources that come with them, they replaced it but I lost a little(I do backups)

[GET OFF AXLS BACK]

I had one just one just over a year and it died, I am not a big fan of the power sources that come with them, they replaced it but I lost a little(I do backups)

Luck of the draw gg, i think ive had mine around 6 years now and it is perfect, not particularly expensive either

[kevin]

Any tech savy people can help me out on this?

I have 2 external had drives (320) each.

I have my entire CD collection, DVD collection, stuff from school i want to keep, pictures, porn (lol) etc, on them

Anyways, one of them has been acting up lately........like my computer won't read it sometimes. I have had it for about two years, and i was wondering should i invest and a new one and move everything over, before it dies? If it is dying?

And also, how long should a person expect an external hardrive to last?

Yes it is probably dying. You should back it all up ASAP. Western Digital has never failed me, but for me they last ~4-5 years. Seagate/Fujitsu much shorter

If you can, diagnose the drive and see how many bad sectors are on it

[gunsguy]

alot of times people may not know either that many drives these days have 3 year warranty, they will give you new drive but you loose your info

[77Jesters]

Any tech savy people can help me out on this?

I have 2 external had drives (320) each.

I have my entire CD collection, DVD collection, stuff from school i want to keep, pictures, porn (lol) etc, on them

Anyways, one of them has been acting up lately........like my computer won't read it sometimes. I have had it for about two years, and i was wondering should i invest and a new one and move everything over, before it dies? If it is dying?

And also, how long should a person expect an external hardrive to last?

Yes it is probably dying. You should back it all up ASAP. Western Digital has never failed me, but for me they last ~4-5 years. Seagate/Fujitsu much shorter

If you can, diagnose the drive and see how many bad sectors are on it

I had a WD Mybook 500gig fail miserably on me, after only about 2/3 months.. hadn't been doing my back ups of it for a long while, and after looking into costs of data recovery, I eventually just pulled it down, found it was a Seagate drive inside the enclosure!, plugged that up internally, running fine ever since!

It really is just a matter of luck imo, you don't necessarily get what you pay for either. I would never rely on one as my sole backup though, always have copies on discs, and/or other hdd's, and also, consider keeping backup's offsite too, just incase of any worst case scenario...

[bacardimayne]

My SimpleTech 1 TB has been going strong for about 2 years now. As long as you take care of it you shouldn't have to worry.

[ThinkAboutYou]

Any tech savy people can help me out on this?

I have 2 external had drives (320) each.

I have my entire CD collection, DVD collection, stuff from school i want to keep, pictures, porn (lol) etc, on them

Anyways, one of them has been acting up lately........like my computer won't read it sometimes. I have had it for about two years, and i was wondering should i invest and a new one and move everything over, before it dies? If it is dying?

And also, how long should a person expect an external hardrive to last?

No time frame

They can go at any time

Always good to have two backups at least

Any tech savy people can help me out on this?

I have 2 external had drives (320) each.

I have my entire CD collection, DVD collection, stuff from school i want to keep, pictures, porn (lol) etc, on them

Anyways, one of them has been acting up lately........like my computer won't read it sometimes. I have had it for about two years, and i was wondering should i invest and a new one and move everything over, before it dies? If it is dying?

And also, how long should a person expect an external hardrive to last?

Yes it is probably dying. You should back it all up ASAP. Western Digital has never failed me, but for me they last ~4-5 years. Seagate/Fujitsu much shorter

If you can, diagnose the drive and see how many bad sectors are on it

Yeah seagate had a few bad batches with short life spans

I had two hard disks fail

Edited February 14, 2010 by ThinkAboutYou