Well, instead of investin 1000 dollars. Why not buy 2 of 1TB external harddrives? Back up the back-ups. the chance of both drives fail at once is pretty small.

iclim4 said: darconi said: iclim4 said: there is a temporary way of fixing harddrives. try throwing your dead harddrive in the freezer wrapped in news paper and plastic. leave overnight and copy your files. how long was your harddrive in service BTW? Id cry if my extenal died on me and Id lose all my files and data. I cant leave without my 100gb porn stash It was working for maybe slightly over a year. It was a 250 gb one too with a lot of my information so I was understandably mega pissed. The problem pretty much is that the head is broke so there's not many ways of trying to fix it. what do you mean the head broke off? so it broke from abuse? Cause I'd be royally piss and cursing at their customer service if it broke from something defective they put in. Oh and to answer your first question, I also have a Western Digital 750gb HDD. Bought it for $175 almost a year ago, in BB. and just from reading this topic, my head is trying persuade me to buy another external HDD and keep my data there. that way if one HDD fails on me, id still have my data. damn im getting paranoid. question to everyone, how long is the average HDD lifespan. I generally use mine about an hour a week. I was expecting somewhere around 10 years? though I might upgrade to the flash based HDD's for safer storage in the future.

 Basically the head reader just died and no abuse was done whatsoever.  Its apparently very common to the Hitachi Deskstar, enough that people in the repair biz calls it the Deathstar.

This has made me much more aware of failing components though.  Its easy to replace the hard drive, hard to replace the memories and files of stuff (i.e. vacation pictures) you put on it that wasn't backed up.   

There aren't many choices from the begenning but the 2 most popular are Seagate and Western Digital.

lol @ no one mentioning Maxstor.

darconi said: iclim4 said: darconi said: iclim4 said: there is a temporary way of fixing harddrives. try throwing your dead harddrive in the freezer wrapped in news paper and plastic. leave overnight and copy your files. how long was your harddrive in service BTW? Id cry if my extenal died on me and Id lose all my files and data. I cant leave without my 100gb porn stash It was working for maybe slightly over a year. It was a 250 gb one too with a lot of my information so I was understandably mega pissed. The problem pretty much is that the head is broke so there's not many ways of trying to fix it. what do you mean the head broke off? so it broke from abuse? Cause I'd be royally piss and cursing at their customer service if it broke from something defective they put in. Oh and to answer your first question, I also have a Western Digital 750gb HDD. Bought it for $175 almost a year ago, in BB. and just from reading this topic, my head is trying persuade me to buy another external HDD and keep my data there. that way if one HDD fails on me, id still have my data. damn im getting paranoid. question to everyone, how long is the average HDD lifespan. I generally use mine about an hour a week. I was expecting somewhere around 10 years? though I might upgrade to the flash based HDD's for safer storage in the future. Basically the head reader just died and no abuse was done whatsoever. Its apparently very common to the Hitachi Deskstar, enough that people in the repair biz calls it the Deathstar. This has made me much more aware of failing components though. Its easy to replace the hard drive, hard to replace the memories and files of stuff (i.e. vacation pictures) you put on it that wasn't backed up.

 The IBMs were the deathstars, the Hitachis were fine. Then again the deathstars were common when my 1ghz Athlon and geforce 2 were zomg amazing.

truthiness said: darconi said: iclim4 said: darconi said: iclim4 said: there is a temporary way of fixing harddrives. try throwing your dead harddrive in the freezer wrapped in news paper and plastic. leave overnight and copy your files. how long was your harddrive in service BTW? Id cry if my extenal died on me and Id lose all my files and data. I cant leave without my 100gb porn stash It was working for maybe slightly over a year. It was a 250 gb one too with a lot of my information so I was understandably mega pissed. The problem pretty much is that the head is broke so there's not many ways of trying to fix it. what do you mean the head broke off? so it broke from abuse? Cause I'd be royally piss and cursing at their customer service if it broke from something defective they put in. Oh and to answer your first question, I also have a Western Digital 750gb HDD. Bought it for $175 almost a year ago, in BB. and just from reading this topic, my head is trying persuade me to buy another external HDD and keep my data there. that way if one HDD fails on me, id still have my data. damn im getting paranoid. question to everyone, how long is the average HDD lifespan. I generally use mine about an hour a week. I was expecting somewhere around 10 years? though I might upgrade to the flash based HDD's for safer storage in the future. Basically the head reader just died and no abuse was done whatsoever. Its apparently very common to the Hitachi Deskstar, enough that people in the repair biz calls it the Deathstar. This has made me much more aware of failing components though. Its easy to replace the hard drive, hard to replace the memories and files of stuff (i.e. vacation pictures) you put on it that wasn't backed up.   The IBMs were the deathstars, the Hitachis were fine. Then again the deathstars were common when my 1ghz Athlon and geforce 2 were zomg amazing.

 IBM sold the manufacturing to Hitachi and they inherited all the problems.

Seagate and only Seagate. If you're buying cheap, consumer level drives, Seagate makes an "ES" series that has a mean time between failure of one million hours. Longer than any other consumer level drives.

I deal with literally thousands of drives every day (and regular failures). I will only allow groups to order Seagate drives due to the high failure rates and irregular failure modes I've seen with other brands. The worst, in particular, is Maxtor.

Seagate FTW

darconi said: truthiness said: darconi said: iclim4 said: darconi said: iclim4 said: there is a temporary way of fixing harddrives. try throwing your dead harddrive in the freezer wrapped in news paper and plastic. leave overnight and copy your files. how long was your harddrive in service BTW? Id cry if my extenal died on me and Id lose all my files and data. I cant leave without my 100gb porn stash It was working for maybe slightly over a year. It was a 250 gb one too with a lot of my information so I was understandably mega pissed. The problem pretty much is that the head is broke so there's not many ways of trying to fix it. what do you mean the head broke off? so it broke from abuse? Cause I'd be royally piss and cursing at their customer service if it broke from something defective they put in. Oh and to answer your first question, I also have a Western Digital 750gb HDD. Bought it for $175 almost a year ago, in BB. and just from reading this topic, my head is trying persuade me to buy another external HDD and keep my data there. that way if one HDD fails on me, id still have my data. damn im getting paranoid. question to everyone, how long is the average HDD lifespan. I generally use mine about an hour a week. I was expecting somewhere around 10 years? though I might upgrade to the flash based HDD's for safer storage in the future. Basically the head reader just died and no abuse was done whatsoever. Its apparently very common to the Hitachi Deskstar, enough that people in the repair biz calls it the Deathstar. This has made me much more aware of failing components though. Its easy to replace the hard drive, hard to replace the memories and files of stuff (i.e. vacation pictures) you put on it that wasn't backed up.   The IBMs were the deathstars, the Hitachis were fine. Then again the deathstars were common when my 1ghz Athlon and geforce 2 were zomg amazing. IBM sold the manufacturing to Hitachi and they inherited all the problems.

 Hitachi inherited the name, and nothing else - they were already manufacturing hdds at the time.

I am extremely happy with my Seagate.

Go with Western Digital AND stay away from the Hitachi. Just in case.