That's gotta be some bad luck or something.

I've been using an old WD 640 GB external HDD from 2007-2008 for my Wii U and haven't had any issues with it yet *knocks on wood*

Sounds kinda like a wiiu problem. My wd 2tb for my modded wii works fine. Buy physical!

Nobody works an HDD harder than you, Spurge. Your hard drives probably died from exhaustion. I feel sorry for them.

Anyway, are you connecting one HDD to two USB ports? If you're not, you should.

I betting it was one too many RCMADIAX games on the hard drives that push them to commit suicide.

So if your external crashes then your save files on the Wii U are wiped also?  That doesn't make sense.

That's brutal!  I think you need to take a break from your Wii U for awhile.  Just dont even look at it or else it might build up rage xD

I have several very cheap big-ish external harddrives as well as a big high quality backupdrive. All of them are 3,5'' and have their own power supply and I havent lost any of them yet. The one I use for my WiiU is one of the cheap ones and it works well.

I have made very bad experiences with 2,5'' ones however. they always grow too powerhungry, even with a y-cable or die of mechanical failure.

What brand is it?

did you keep it cool (cold) and where you carefull with it (not moveing it too often, shakeing it ect)?

Was it always hooked up? or only when you needed to play a game on it?

And no they typically dont only last a year.

Excuse my ignorance. Are you referring to some external HDD? is it possible to connect some external HDD kinda like the XBone?

Some of us are stubborn enough, that I dont think physical is going away any time soon.