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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)
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