COMMON REASONS FOR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE FAILURE

External hard drives are becoming more popular in recent years for many reasons.  The data storage needs of the end user have significantly increased due to the usage of digital photographs, video, songs and more.  The need to transfer large amounts of data between computers has increased.  Also, the process of adding an additional internal hard drive is more difficult than an external hard drive because of the internal connections required.  Therefore, there has been a significant
increase in the usage of external hard drives.

COMMON EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE PROBLEMS
All hard drives are prone to failure whether they are internal or external (see common reasons for hard drive failure).  In
addition, external hard drives may be prone to failure due to the following reasons:

• Dropped the hard drive- Due to the portability of external hard drives, there are more incidents of drives being dropped while being transported.  This can cause the interior components to become damaged rendering the
  drive unusable.
   

• Hard Drive fell from a surface- Many external hard drives fall because they have been placed too close to the edge
  of a surface.  Also, drives that are designed to sit upright on a flat surface are also prone to tipping.  It is probably a
  good idea to lay the drive flat instead of upright on a flat surface.
   

• Dangling cables- Excess cable length should be properly pulled out of the way to ensure the drive does not get
  pulled to the floor by getting tangled up with feet or hands in the work area.
   

• Using the wrong power cord- Many people mistakenly plug the wrong power cord into their external drive causing
  a power surge which will cause an overheated hard drive.  It is crucial to make sure you are using the correct power cord and cables with the correct hard drive.

EXTERNAL DRIVE ERROR MESSAGES

delayed write failed external hard drive
external hard drive crashed
external hard drive noise
hard drive failure
external hard drive corrupted
external hard drive not recognized
drive stopped working
hard drive does not mount
input/output error
volume error

COMMON BRANDS & MODELS OF EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES

Western Digital (My Book, WD Elements, WD Passport)
Lacie (Golden Disk, d2 Quadra, Big Disk Extreme, Big Disk, Bigger Disk Extreme)
Lacie RAID (2big Triple, Biggest Quadra, Two Big eSATA, 2big Spare, Biggest S2S,
Iomega (Silver desktop, Portable, Minimax, Power Pro, UltraMax, Network)
Maxtor (One Touch, Basics Personal Storage 3200, Shared Storage II)
Seagate (FreeAgent, External SATA, Mirra Personal Server)
Hitachi (Ultrastar, CinemaStar)
Fantom Drives (G-Force MegaDisk)
Buffalo (DriveStation, TeraStation, LinkStation )
Toshiba
Fujitsu
MicroNet (SR4)