External Hard drive woes - recommendations

[TheBlank]

Ok, all these problems have hit in the last 2 weeks so I'm looking for some recommended replacements.

I had two external hard drives, both Cavalry. One of them an older 1 TB (3+ years old), the other a 2TB (1 - 2 years old). My girlfriend had a Western Digital My Book drive 1TB (2 years old). I voided all of the warranties in an effort to recover the data, so an RMA is out of the question.

All of them had Western Digital Green drives in them. I connected all of them to my hard drive USB reader, with no success. The WD and the 2TB Cavalry both reported as unallocated, with bad sectors appearing during data recovery. The 1TB Cavalry's green drive started to smoke as soon as it was powered on, killing the hard drive reader. I'm still looking into replacing the PCB (despite knowing that the firmware on these PCB's is really, REALLY drive specific.)

That being said, I'm extremely wary of picking up another drive with a Western Digital Green drive in it. I've been looking at the Buffalo Ministation Plus for my girlfriend and I, but the fact that it's pre-formatted to FAT32 is throwing me off a little. Neither of us is using a MAC, so NTFS would be fine.

Is this a decent drive? I've heard some complaints that the connector is finicky. Any other suggestions?

My usage: Media storage, lots of videos (family), photos (NEF and JPG), Photoshop files, Premier files...

My girlfriend's usage: MP3's, word docs, point and shoot JPG files, things of that ilk.

My usage would be the most affected by the 4GB cap of FAT32, although I haven't hit too many files larger than 4GB yet. I do have a 2 TB RAID 1 in a file server at my disposal as well.

Thanks in advance. I'm trying to get this replacement to my girl as soon as possible, as she's still in Paralegal school.

 

[drescherjm]

but the fact that it's pre-formatted to FAT32 is throwing me off a little. Neither of us is using a MAC, so NTFS would be fine.

My usage would be the most affected by the 4GB cap of FAT32, although I haven't hit too many files larger than 4GB yet.

Then format the drive in NTFS which you should be using anyways. On top of that you should always do a full format before using a drive to verify that it is working reliably.

One of them an older 1 TB (3+ years old),

Remember that 5 years is about all you can expect. Also that each year of the 5 year lifetime there is an expected failure rate of over 1%.

I'm still looking into replacing the PCB

That is rarely the problem. Or at least in the > 100 hard drive RMAs I have done at work over the last 15 years I have never ever had a drive with a bad PCB. For me most failures these days are caused by head failure or more specifically the inability for the drive to reliably read back what it has written.

 

[J Macker]

1TB for $120 is quite expensive.

Staples has a 1.5TB seagate external for $82.
http://www.staples.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-GoFlex-15TB-External-Hard-Drive-USB-20/product-nr_401441

They also have a 2TB seagate for $100:
http://www.staples.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-GoFlex-2TB-External-Hard-Drive-USB-20/product-nr_885645

You could buy the drives from Costco to alleviate potential warranty problems, but they will be more expensive. There is a promotion for a few more days to get a 3TB Seagate at costco for $120. I'm not sure if you have to have a coupon, my friend bought one for me.

 

[TheBlank]

I figured that formatting the drive to NTFS would be the proper course of action, but with these drives seemingly becoming more and more picky, I wanted to make sure that there wasn't some odd interaction with that drive and NTFS.

5 years is my norm with drives, sometimes longer. But the only drives I've had that have died (without outside interference) have been seagates and now Caviar Greens. I'm taking that a sign.

As for the PCB, I figured that it had a better chance than a head failure or read/write error, due to the smoke coming from the power connection. I haven't found any burnt out sections on the PCB yet, but I haven't removed it to check the other side. From what I know, smoke is a primary sign of PCB or power connection failure (also attached to the PCB). I know it's a long shot, but the other option is to just junk the disk, so...

@J Macker

Thanks for the suggestions, but at present I'm looking for something a little more portable. That and every Seagate drive I've ever owned has ended in catastrophic failure. I'll keep those in mind for my media drive, however. I have found the same Buffalo drive for just over 100, but the Amazon link was still up in my tabs when making this post.

 

[Aesma]

You talk about recovering data so I'm guessing you didn't have a backup, might want to buy more drives to make sure that doesn't happen again.

 

[drescherjm]

That and every Seagate drive I've ever owned has ended in catastrophic failure.

But the only drives I've had that have died (without outside interference) have been seagates and now Caviar Greens. I'm taking that a sign.

Remember now you have basically only 2 choices Seagate or WDC. That is since Seagate purchasd Samsung and WDC purchased Hitachi. The buffalo drive you linked will be either a Seagate green or WDC green drive. Most likely whichever they can get the cheapest.

 

[TheBlank]

You talk about recovering data so I'm guessing you didn't have a backup, might want to buy more drives to make sure that doesn't happen again.

I do have backups, including a dedicated RAID array in a fileserver. However, I'm not 100% certain that I had backed up my one external recently. I'm fairly confident that everything was saved, but I'd like to be 100%.

My gf, however, does not have a tertiary backup system, despite my recommendations to do so. Thankfully, I hadn't even gotten her to backup to the external, so nothing was lost.

Remember now you have basically only 2 choices Seagate or WDC. That is since Seagate purchasd Samsung and WDC purchased Hitachi. The buffalo drive you linked will be either a Seagate green or WDC green drive. Most likely whichever they can get the cheapest.

Yeah, I figured that might be the case. But I was hoping that there might be some knowledge out there as to who buys the better batches, and has fewer failure rates due to a bad batch, or poorly designed firmware/software/PCB.

With that being the case, would it be better to just buy a bare drive and get an enclosure?

 

[drescherjm]

I have not seen any real statistical analysis of failure rates that goes down to manufacturer level or down further to batches. Google did a large statistical analysis in 2007 but did not separate out manufacturers. Not that this would be helpful in 2012 anyways since you will certainly not be purchasing the same technology in 2012 than what was selling before 2007.

http://static.googleusercontent.com...ch.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

 

[J Macker]

Remember now you have basically only 2 choices Seagate or WDC. That is since Seagate purchasd Samsung and WDC purchased Hitachi. The buffalo drive you linked will be either a Seagate green or WDC green drive. Most likely whichever they can get the cheapest.

Yep. He said he didn't want WD Green, so I figured Seagate was the only other option.
I haven't torn apart that specific model, but 50/50 chance it's a seagate.

But if portability is an issue, then that rules out the drives I linked.

 

[TheBlank]

Yep. He said he didn't want WD Green, so I figured Seagate was the only other option.
I haven't torn apart that specific model, but 50/50 chance it's a seagate.

But if portability is an issue, then that rules out the drives I linked.

Sorry if I seem difficult or a "brick wall." Trying to multitask here, and my communication skills are definitely not catching up with me. I appreciate all suggestions. I guess I mean to give my experiences as a reply, but still leave the conversation open to things like "well that might have been the case before, but I find it is no longer true."

I have the absolute worst luck with computer equipment failures, so I'm a little gun shy.

 

[extide]

I have seen instances where the controller fails. This is sometimes the case when the drive just stops spinning up and does not detect, but not always. Pretty rare these days infact, and I have heard that even on identical drives there is some specific settings stored on the pcb relative to that disk, so you may cause trouble.

Also it's Caviar not Cavalry

 

[J Macker]

I was wondering about the Cavalry.

Yep. Big difference:

 

[TheBlank]

Actually, it is Cavalry. It was the external hard drive maker, that happened to use WD caviar drives.

For example

 

[J Macker]

So why did your "Cavalry" drives that used WD Caviar drives, have WD Green drives?

WD Green != WD Caviar

 

[J Macker]

Here you go:

1TB Hitachi 2.5 external for $80.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&sku=846319&is=REG&A=details&Q=

(ripped from SD)

 

[TheBlank]

So why did your "Cavalry" drives that used WD Caviar drives, have WD Green drives?

WD Green != WD Caviar

I've only ever seen Western Digital Caviar Green drives, never ran into a plain old "Green" non-caviar drive. Thus, I have a tendency to leave out the "Caviar" and simply refer to the color involved.

Similar to this., although obviously not 6gb/s and older.

And thanks for finding that Touro. I'll look into it.

 

[J Macker]

fair enough. I guess I never noticed that the Greens were Caviar.

What do you think about the Hitach 1TB for $80 deal?
Yeah, it's another WD drive. But amazing price and small.

 

[TheBlank]

That $80 deal is hard to ignore. However, I've been reading some issues with the controller for WD USB3 connections in their 2.5 offerings becoming temperamental. I'd be curious to see if this drive follows a similar design structure or issues. I'm combing around for reviews as I write this.

80 bucks is definitely a good price, and I buy from bhphotovideo all the time for my DSLR's and other camera equipment, so their reputation helps.

I am starting to wonder, with a $20 reduction in price whether the reduction is from a rebate to the seller, or a signal that these weren't the optimal results of a batch...