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.

I've usually gone with Western Digital, myself. They rarely fail me. For backup drives, I've only had one (a 500GB LaCie), which has never given me any trouble at all.

I also favor Western Digital.

Western Digital very reliable

Western Digital. And a Matrox 4 gig I have been using since about ~1998

Managed to squeeze in a WD(200GB) with about 30 gmes on it into my PS2 although the brand wasn't recommened to fit :D

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.

Western Digital all the way. I've had over 20 WD harddrives in my life, and only one had slight issues, but that was an old 30GB worn out one.
Samsung is also reliable, but the bigger ones (500GB and up) seem noisy to me.

I normally go with Seagate. I had a LOT of trouble with Western Digitals 60 gig drives. 5 dead on arrival and many others dead within a few months. Ugh f'n western digital!

 I have a Lacie D2 External drive, 250GB and it's a beauty. I've noticed though when I actually look at the properties of the disk drive, it's reported as a Western Digital hard drive which I was suprised at, win win all around I suppose!

Go with seagate, 5 year warranty on all drives.