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  1. Hi All,

    I have a SONY external hard drive that just died one day within it's warranty period.

    SONY won't recover my drive contents so the next time I've got an extra $500 I'll have to find a data recovery firm.

    I need to back up my contents - GIMP/graphic files, music, videos, data but I can't seem to find an objective, independent evaluation of which external hard drives are most reliable.

    Have you found any such article?

    Or have you found through experience certain brands more reliable than others?

    Popular Mechanics and CNET seem to be just "reviews" gleaned from press releases.

    Thanks so much!
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  2. Member Bernix's Avatar
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    Apr 2016
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    Europe
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    Hi,
    I have Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB for eight years, almost always connected and no any problem. But I must admit that depend piece from piece... Several time i disconnected it improperly (cable disconnection) and it still works without problem. But I know, I will have to change it soon. Nothing last forever.

    Bernix
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  3. Member godai's Avatar
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    Oct 2012
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    United States Florida
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    whats wrong with hard drive? you can try fix it getting used parts for that model.
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  4. Hi Bernix,

    I need a 2 TB but I always liked WD for internal hard drives.

    Thanks for sharing your experience.

    Hi godai,

    I have no expertise in fixing hard drives.

    It keeps clicking like it's trying to access the drive partitions but never does.

    Thanks.
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  5. I used to buy a LOT of hard drives. I am still a big believer in getting the larger drives in enclosures that have a fan. Heat kills drives. I've had failures in external drives that did not have a fan, but never had a failure in an external drive that was housed in an enclosure that included a fan.

    Back when I bought lots of external enclosures, I would find a really good enclosure with a fan, buy a bunch of those, and then buy bare IDE (later SATA) drives and build my own enclosure. It was cheaper that way, and I was able to get a better cooling system.

    These days I store most of my media on bare drives that I mount into one of several "enclosures" that are built into my computer. This completely eliminates the Firewire, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, or eSata external connection, and therefore I get better performance. I also get cooling.

    As for recovery, there are some really good recovery utilities that you can buy. All of them let you download and install the utility, before you buy, and try it out to see if it will be able to recover files. I've had pretty good luck with several of these utilities. The last time I had to do this was 2015, on a client computer. I tried three different utilities before I found one (Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Home) that would work. It was expensive ($150, if I remember correctly), but cheap compared to the $500-$2,000 that you'll pay to have the work done for you.
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