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My Western Digital (My Book) external hard drive just went bad. (USB/Firewire)
It's only about 1-1/2 years old. I'll be needing another External & was wondering what other folks use.
This is really disappointing. I have/had ALL my music on it.
Thanks in advance.
Mick
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Very scarry. I have the same thing.
Actually have two 500 G Western Digital (My Books). One is about 1 1/2 years old and the other abut 2 months. Since one is mainly backup I have been thinking of disconnecting it when not in use (which is most of the time). The other is BIAB 2009 exclusively.
BIAB – 2026, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, Motu Audio Express 6x6 - My SoundCloud.
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I have a Seagate Free Agent Pro-750G, that I've had no problems with. I have the content of my laptop on the Seagate, including BIAB. Later, Ray
Asus Q500A i7 Win 10 64 bit 8GB ram 750 HD 15.5" touch screen, BIAB 2017, Casio PX 5s, Xw P1, Center Point Stereo SS V3 and EWI 4000s.
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Hey Mick,
I can´t recommend Lacie enough! I´ve had my 1 TB external Lacie for 3 years now. I take it all over the place, use it while I´m working on Cruise ships pretty much all over the world. I haven´t had 1 issue, ever. I´ve heard of lots of other musicians who have had issues with Western Digital drives. Seagate is also good, in fact, I´m not sure if this is true, but I´ve heard that Lacie uses Seagate drives and their own enclosure.
Having said that, I´m reading now where a lot of Music pros are starting to use SSD drives. What I´m hearing is that because there is no spinning platter, your data is much safer. The down side right now is cost, although that too is set to change soon.
My last advice: Multiple copies of your Back Ups!!! I´ve learned the hard way.
Help this helps,
Ed
Acapulco
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Don't give up on it unless and until you remove the drive itself from the USB cradle and either hook it up inside another or hook it up inside the computer and see if the drive actually works.
A friend of mine thought the drive was dead, turned out to be the electronics inside the USB box. His drive was fine. Mac to the rescue one mo' time.
--Mac
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Thanks for the input guys!
I've always been partial to Seagate myself. My first computer had a Seagate 240 MB!!!
Mac...
I don't know anymore...
You are from Earth right?
It appears as though there was a loose connection inside the enclosure.
(At least I hope that's it!)
It seems to be working okay now. ("he said trepidly with his fingers crossed")
In any event, I'm also going to get another external drive, maybe 2.
I'll keep ya' posted.
Mick
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I own a Lacie 500 gb. Great hard drive, no problems hauling from gig to gig. Even dropped it once and still works fine ( Although I do not recomend dropping, it causes heart palputations!).
Lonnie
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G'day Ed, Quote:
Having said that, I´m reading now where a lot of Music pros are starting to use SSD drives. What I´m hearing is that because there is no spinning platter, your data is much safer. The down side right now is cost, although that too is set to change soon.
Another down side is read/write cycles - they don't have anything like the capacity of a spinning platter for read/write cycles and so the NVRAM eventually dies. Your data isn't actually safer at all. Still, they're getting better almost daily... For mine, I'd use an SSD for lower power consumption, less heat, no noise and speed but NOT reliability over the long term - if you use one: BACK IT UP!
G'day Mick,
Quote:
I've always been partial to Seagate myself. My first computer had a Seagate 240 MB!!!
I like Seagates, though my very first HDD was a 5 MB TEAC which I thought was amazing ('till then I'd been using 360k 5 1/4" floppies), then I added another 5MB - this one was an NEC. When I got my first 20 (NEC), then a 40 MB (Seagate) I was nearly in heaven. The first Novell server I managed had 2*300 MB ESDI drives (NEC) in a software mirror - heady stuff! And not really so long ago - the server was in 1987 (or maybe '88)
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya  --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
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Man oh man. I read this thread on Monday, my external drive died on Tuesday. I had just bought a new Seagate 750gig external but haven't set it up yet and was about to start transferring stuff but first I wanted to clear some space from my internal E drive so just last week I moved over 100 gigs from the E drive to this now dead external 250 gig. Just last week! Aarggh! It included all my backup live recording session files. I read Mac's tip so I pulled the drive, put it into my tower and nothing, then put it into another external case and nothing. The only way my system at least sees the drive is in it's original firewire case. The drive will then show up in "my computer" as a G drive but I can't access it. It says the file or directory is corrupted. The good news is I took it to my nephew's house where he has every piece of software known to man I think and he fired up Easy Recovery Pro and viola everything is there and I copied it all over to another external. That program is about $100 or so. Best guess is my File Allocation Table got corrupted and that can happen a number of ways, a power fluctuation, a virus or just some glitch in the system. Later, I'm going to see if the drive can be fully restored but for now at least I got all my data copied off. Whew!
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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I have an 'Iomega' that works great. But don't buy another 'My Book' unless you check about the 'sleep' feature on them. I have one and it's working OK except for the 'sleep' on it. It goes to sleep after a certain length of time and then has to wake up each time I want to access it or save something. Drives me crazy. Wasn't aware of it when I bought it. I contacted support and they said that the sleep allows the drive to last longer and there's nothing that can be done. I was going to send it back but waited too long and now I'm stuck with it. Thanks for the reminder to back up my data on these imperfect machines.
"The desire for fame is the last infirmity cast off even by the wise."
Cornelius Tacitus
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I have a My Book which is hooked up to my keyboard. It runs and runs and runs. I have a LaCie 250GB in the Porsche case, and guess what, it's a Western Digital drive. I have a 750G Free Agent that I have set up as e-sata which I was using for backups. I should have used it as an intermediary when I was moving files from my old computer to the new one, because somehow or another, I've lost all my documents, music, pictures, etc. I've purchased, and am using now Stellar's Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software, with the hopes that I'll be able to find the deleted files on the old hard drive. If not that, then I'm going to have to look on a partition on one of the drives in the new computer, and hope I can recover it from there. Very slow going, the recovery software has been running for 10 and a half hours, and hasn't completed half of the drive yet.
Gary
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
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And, after almost 24 hours of running, I still have not completed the scan on a 320GB drive. Thank God I didn't have it on a Terrabyte drive.  Gary
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
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Here's my advice - based on years of experience.
You can buy any drive as long as it has the words Seagate written on it.
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I'm not too sure about that, Cardinal. While the Seagates I've bought have been okay, I remember a time when they were failing out of the box. Also, depending on the model, there have been some very bad reviews on certain Seagate models on Newegg. I like my Free Agent drive, I use them at work for backup, and I have Seagates in our file server RAID array, and like them.
For my latest build, I went with Western Digital. I've always had good luck with WD drives.
Gary
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
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G'day Gary, Quote:
I'm not too sure about that, Cardinal. While the Seagates I've bought have been okay, I remember a time when they were failing out of the box. Also, depending on the model, there have been some very bad reviews on certain Seagate models on Newegg. I like my Free Agent drive, I use them at work for backup, and I have Seagates in our file server RAID array, and like them.
For my latest build, I went with Western Digital. I've always had good luck with WD drives.
WRT the Seagates failing out of the box, I can't help wondering... Some years back I started refusing to accept machines from our suppliers that were equipped with Quantum HDDs. Then Quantum sold it's HDD arm to Maxtor - and again I refused to accept machines with Maxtor drives - in both cases the failure rate was far too high - greater than 10% within warranty period and approaching 50% within 1 year of end of warranty. Guess maybe that's why Quantum got out of the HDD business. Their TBUs are very good! We specified either IBM or Seagate drives until about 12 month before IBM sold their drives to Hitachi (IBM had let quality deteriorate and reliability had become an issue) wherefore we dropped IBM and specified Seagates only. We tried Hitachi's for a while but were dissatisfied with reliability and performance.
Anyhow, to continue, a couple of years ago Seagate acquired Maxtor... It seemed to me that some of the Seagate models were simply Quantum and Maxtor models that had been rebadged, though I also read that Seagate had closed the acquired fabrication plants so I don't really know what was being shipped under what label there for a while.
Perhaps the Seagates with the bad reviews were really not Seagates at all..?
For my customers, we generally prefer Seagates. The only reason WD's are not as high on our preference list is simply performance - Seagate has faster standard drives (yes, I know, WD have some 10,000 RPM drives that are very fast but these are not their basic drives)
If you ask enough people, you will get horror stories about every manufacturer. For what its worth, we prefer to sell HP servers - IMHO they are without out peer in their storage subsystems and their Smart Array Controllers are simply the best in the world - bar none. HP currently use Seagate and WD drives in their servers - and have done for many years - this says a lot to me.
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
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Every doggone one of 'em regardless of brand, are made in Singapore.
It is shared technology and give or take a few things, the quality level is about the same for all as far as durability concerns go.
Frankly, the terms, "durability" and "hard drive" should obviously be mutually exclusive.
I'd venture to say that the majority of hard drive failures are not due to hardware faults but to internal software probs. Unless you crash a head or the like.
It is a wonder that the things work at all.
Regardless of where they were designed, where manufactured or who manufactured them.
Failure is to be expected.
Backup accordingly.
--Mac
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I recently purchased a 500GB Maxtor external hard drive from Walmart for $90 USD. The major concern for me was the warranty. I purchased this one because it has a 5-year warranty while others had 1 to 3 year warranties.
I still back everything up on archival CD’s though.
I think my wife has started to show the first signs of dementia.
She said she can't remember what she ever saw in me!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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G'day Mac, Quote:
Every doggone one of 'em regardless of brand, are made in Singapore.
It is shared technology and give or take a few things, the quality level is about the same for all as far as durability concerns go.
Almost but not quite - regardless, they aren't all made in the same plants. Samsung make drives in Korea IIRC, and I've seen a few "no-names" from India. Not sure where Fujitsu and Hitachi are making theirs these days (Hitachi took over IBM's drives - they used to be made by Seagate, but I think Hitachi make their own now - not sure where)
Quote:
I'd venture to say that the majority of hard drive failures are not due to hardware faults but to internal software probs. Unless you crash a head or the like.
When we see what we call a HD failure, it is the HDD. Sometime the logic board, sometimes a chamber failure of some kind... Remember the Quantum "fireball"? They were well named - saw more than I care to count go up in a cloud of sparks and smoke - they had a hybrid chip on board for the platter motor control which used to regularly blow itself apart.
Maxtor's had a habit of running too hot, usually resulting in a chamber failure - Quantums also often had chamber failures though usually for different reasons. Seen lots of "dropped" heads (actually, the "slipper" comes adrift and the head is allowed to contact the surface - very noisy...)
Quote:
It is a wonder that the things work at all.
Regardless of where they were designed, where manufactured or who manufactured them.
Failure is to be expected.
Backup accordingly.
Better advice was never uttered.
Mario:
When you store your CDRW or DVDRW or whatever you use, store 'em in a cool, dry, dark place - this media doesn't last nearly as long as the manufacturers would like us to believe.
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
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What I wrote is based on firsthand experience in a clean room, where we used to exchange disk platters in an effort to recover data.
While I did indeed find many drives with mechanical/electrical failures, I found many more at that time that were wrecked due to viruses like the older "Korean" varieties that merely wipe out Track Zero and things like that, which to the user would likely get blamed on something else due to the way the drive acts. There also exist bad codes that will crash heads. That one looks like a hardware fault to the uninitiated. Be careful with your disk swap cure because many are trojan-like and will be lurking to trash the replacement drive's data at a later time, too. -- Which leads to users hating one brand of disk, of course. They can indeed write code that can trash hardware.
--Mac
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G'day Mac, your comments are appreciated, but with all due respect, we haven't been fooled into suspecting a faulty HDD by a software cause in many, many years... As for disliking one brand of HDD WRT another - fault rates speak for themselves - I have reported what we have seen, not bias - the only bias I admit to is being highly suspicious of m$... Which reminds me, Mario - I'd guess that despite what the label says, your Maxtor is probably a Seagate drive. I'm pretty sure that when Seagate acquired Maxtor they shut down the old Quantum and Maxtor factories... Though they did run out the old stock.
--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya --=--You're only paranoid if you're wrong!
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