Less than two months ago, my 4TB HDD from Transcend died after being used for only 3 years. It’d never been dropped or anything but I used it as a main storage for my stuff, since I learned to never keep anything in the laptop itself except the programs. There was no backup and I tried to restore the data but unfortunately I’m not even able to know what’s its problem using CrystalDiskInfo or Windows’ CHKDSK command (there’s no abnormal sound but it never gets recognized when plugged in). So, I learned the importance of backup, storage device health, encryption and that kind of stuff the hard way.
I was having another HDD, so I used it as a main replacement (it’s one year old) and bought two brand-new 5TB HDDs (one from Seagate while the other from WD). I used the WD My Passport as a backup but while it was being encrypted by VeraCrypt and reaching 80%, i got an error message saying it’s damaged, ‘heart beating’ sound appeared on top of the normal spinning sound and I couldn’t access it.
Now after being formatted, it turned out it had pending (bad) sectors and in less than 24 hours, the number went from 8 to 75! I bought another new WD 5TB HDD to replace this one (just to secure my data [I’m paranoid now 😔💔] and buying a new one is cheaper than sending the dysfunctional drive to WD, I’m not from the US). This whole experience is daunting and losing time, money and data is not fun.
My question is why are the storage devices this way, and why do devices fail constantly and we have to replace them every other year? I’m not a conspiracy theorist but is the storage devices production industry a scam, to profit and keep us hooked (much like how smartphone companies want you to buy a new phone every years)?
I’ve no problem buying new storage every 10 years but things fail in less than 3 years? That’s insane.
No. The storage industry is not a scam. HDDs are incredibly complex and delicate mechanical devices, that fail, despite manufacturers putting in enormous efforts to make them as reliable as possible.Portable HDDs are even more vulnerable, and you shouldn’t consider them long term investments. You should rconsider using portable HDDs as your primary storage, and set up a proper backup strategy.
Is NAS the perfect solution? Or should I use what comes in the computer as the main storage? Thanks,
Is NAS the perfect solution? Or should I use internal HDDs as the main storage and daily use? Thanks,
Depends a lot on your particular use-case. For most people OneDrive is a pretty good place to store personal files like documents.
If it’s files you work with daily like for video or media editing, then a local SSD is best. But if it’s for streaming music, movies, or even just Microsoft Office type documents, a NAS is much better.
You can set it up with redundancy as well as a way to scan and scrub your disks and data regularly to ensure they are healthy. But also have a regular backup either in the cloud, another NAS, or external drive.
3-2-1 backup rule exists to avoid the situation you’re in.
learned the importance of backup
Good. Sorry that you learned it the hard way but I guess all of us do ;)
And, yes, external drives are a scam - cheapest drives ever in cheapest cases ever, prone to everything. If you don’t believe it, then try to find out, what kind of hardware is built in and ask the manufacturer for technical data.
Still, they can be okay for other instances of your data (aka backup).
Made in China.
WD My Passport failed in less than a month? 🤔
You’ve not said which OS you were using at the time. What OS did you use to check the device? If you used Windows I’d suggest trying a *nix as it is often better at seeing and potentially accessing the device.
External drives are by definition easier to damage, even inadvertantly.
You may just move it whilst spinning and not notice, etc. Also, lots of power up/power down don’t do good to the motor
But you’ve mainly been unlucky, yes
this generally happens when you buy the trashiest externals on the market
OK I get Transcend but is WD My Passport also a trash? I failed in a month.
I have 5, 6 year old passports in service now…I had one fail due to me leaving the usb cable plugged into it while carrying it around in a backpack to work and the connector failed.
Eventually got it to work by direct wiring it.
The remaining passports just sit on a rack humming along… I am aware of the temperature of these drives when working hard and will slow down the data or just pause for a couple hours to allow them to cool. They can get so hot, it is uncomfortable to hold them… Maybe that is your issue.
Yes, it’s one of the worst portable drives line to ever exist.
Also, see https://www.backblaze.com/blog/drive-failure-over-time-the-bathtub-curve-is-leaking/
What’s the perft kind of drive for daily use? Internal or external? May be SDD or NAS? I though about buying a PC and customizing it but I’m a student and haven’t settled so far and always moving, hence the laptop and the external HDD.
Thanks for the reply, I will look into a solution.
For daily use as an OS drive? SSD no question.
For storage? Depends on needed capacity, I personally wouldn’t consider a HDD over a SSD for anything of mine unless I needed more than 2TB.There is no “perfect” type of drive. You have to balance capacity, performance and durability with price. How much storage do you need, and how much does it grow every year? What kind of work do you do on your laptop? Are you a gamer, programmer, video editor, or do anything else that’s extremely sensitive to disk performance?
This is why we tell people to have one working copy backed up to two separate backup drives (ideally in two places), and a cloud backup too.
Easily can have two drives fail.
Now, if it happened all the time, manufacturer warranties would be 3-6 months and drive makers would say “you’d better buy ten and have nine backups!”
Because… the alternative is to print everything out on paper.
Yes, I got that WD drive just on October 6th, and only used it as a backup. It failed while being encrypted.
Encryption doesn’t have a major drive impact. The data is effectively the same.
Now, if you set a drive to maximum encryption, and encrypt all sectors - that’s basically going to force the drive to write to every sector. This will uncover any drive surface errors, and it’s basically the most stress test-y thing you can do to a drive. If there are bad sectors, you can bet pending reallocated sectors will go up.
Again, that does not mean the drive has failed. Those bad sectors could have been there since the factory. 75 is a concern. But is not a failure.
The fail alert is that you need to zero/erase all sectors, which will allow the drive to do a reallocation. When an erase bit is sent to the sector (by the OS/erase command), that’s when it will reallocate.
I believe you just got bad luck with those drives. You should be able to RMA those drives if they were bought as new. I had a few drives which failed in a few months, and some that are running fine for 5+ years.
All things die… But sometimes it’s luck of the draw. I haven’t had a drive die in over 8 years. Pepper to that in one year I lost 4 drives. It turned out to be a dislodged cable messing things up for me. So… Storage is fine.