I'd like to know which is more reliable? I just had an internal die on me, and now I am deciding what to buy. I'd like to buy an external simply because I just had a bad experience with an internal, but I'd like to know if they are any more reliable. For example, does it also experience the click of death? That is what happened to my last drive. Are the arms of external drives made any better? I know external hard drives are a newer technology, so maybe they have something the internals don't.
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External vs. internal hard drive
- Thread starter COPE2
- Start date
How long did you have the old hard drive for? Most drives last around 3-5 years before they (start to) fail.
If anything, there's a greater chance that an external hard drive could fail sooner, as the drive has only a small metal (or plastic) enclosure to help protect it and it is moved around (and possibly abused) more than an internal hard drive.
If you need a new internal hard drive, get a new internal hard drive. Most of the major players give you a three-year limited warranty, at the very least.
If anything, there's a greater chance that an external hard drive could fail sooner, as the drive has only a small metal (or plastic) enclosure to help protect it and it is moved around (and possibly abused) more than an internal hard drive.
If you need a new internal hard drive, get a new internal hard drive. Most of the major players give you a three-year limited warranty, at the very least.
I had mine for about 3 years. It was made by western digital. It came with a Gateway computer. So basically what you guys are saying is that the arm is the same quality on the external as it is the internal. I am most concerned about arm failures because those are almost impossible to fix and I heard it can cost $1000 to retrieve the data. I have heard of less minor problems where you can replace the logic board. Unfortunately, that solution probably can't help me.
Is it the system/boot drive that failed? If so, don't get an external hard drive kit. This is because most external hard drive kits are USB 2.0-only with no other interfaces whatsoever (and the maximum sustainable transfer rate of a USB 2.0 "High-Speed" interface is more than eight times slower than the maximum sustainable transfer rate of a SATA II interface). Plus the drives in those external kits are slower than most of the internal hard drives on the market. Worst of all, all of the current external kits have a spin-down feature that cannot be disabled at all (this means that the spindle in those external drive kits will always spin down completely after a few minutes of idle no matter what). As such, those external drive kits are suitable only for auxiliary backup storage.
I do not know what exactly what went wrong with my hard drive. It just makes this clicking noise. Some people have said that the arm is broken, while others have told me to replace the logic board. Actually, I am considering sending it to India to a lab and have them replace the arm and back up the info on iso.
Unless you have alot of un replaceable data I wouldn't bother paying to have the drive repaired. Also even after they start ticking some software can be used to pull data off (I lost about 1tb of data a while back toa seagate that started ticking & was able to pull off about 90% of the un replaceable data which was all family photo's)
I have a lot of unreplacable data that I spent a lot of time working on. I would like to get it back, but I am also planning for the future, that's why I wanted to compare externals and internals. I want to get something that has the least chance of what happened to me now with the clicking.
drescherjm
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I do not know what exactly what went wrong with my hard drive. It just makes this clicking noise
Sounds like it died. All drives will die at some point. At work we have 1% to 5% annual failure rate and this is not only the old drives that die because of wear. Some die after a day of use some die at 2 years..
drescherjm
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I have a lot of unreplacable data that I spent a lot of time working on. I would like to get it back, but I am also planning for the future, that's why I wanted to compare externals and internals. I want to get something that has the least chance of what happened to me now with the clicking.
Companies can usually recover your data for about $2000. With that said you need to turn it off and not mess with it at this point. The more you mess with it the harder it will be to recover. If you try software recovery you can destroy data that would have been recoverable.