In the past five years I’ve lost three out of four external hard drives. Each one lasted about 2½ years before dying, with the first and third giving enough warning signs to save some of the data (and in retrospect the second was the same, but I didn’t recognize them until it was too late.) The first two I tentatively blame on a bad surge protector that I didn’t know had blown out, but the most recent one (Seagate 2TB STBV2000100) I was being very careful with.
Am I just unlucky? My friends who use external drives say they’ve never had a drive fail, and some of them are over ten years old. I’m concerned because the current replacement drive (also a Seagate, 8TB Backup Plus with a USB hub) is just as old as the one that failed, but has been plugged into a different computer and rarely used.
Perhaps it’s content related. They commit suicide rather than store another pr0n file.
There’s limited data showing that some of the consumer-grade Seagate models do exhibit below-average reliability. I’d try your luck with a Toshiba or Western Digital and see how it goes.
Do you lift them and set them on their sides or upside down while they’re running or something? Take them into the bath with you? Keep your room at a balmy 112° F?
Sorry, don’t have a real clue. Since 1988 I have had maybe 7 or 8 drives die on me against a backdrop of around 4 dozen that didn’t. My PowerMac 7100 has had a Seagate 2.3 GB drive in it for something like 25 years; hasn’t been on and running nonstop the whole time or anthing but it put in most of a four year span of only being turned off during power failures or when we moved offices.
They do fail (Winchester drives sooner or later always will, too many moving parts not to) but they’re generally not that fragile.
Yeah, this. When I took my defunct Seagate to a local nerd repair place to see if the could retrieve my data (they did), the guy told me that they see a LOT of problems with Seagate products and highly recommended WD. Interestingly (to me, anyway), he also warned against buying anything larger than a 2T drive, as the larger ones often have issues.
You don’t have your removable drive duct-taped to the outside of an MRI system, do you? 
Dumb joke, but I haven’t seen anyone discuss high powered or fluctuating magnetic fields in the vicinity of the drive.
It’s not unknown to happen. It’s not a new problem. As Caldazar alludes to, there are many brands of hard drive, but they are mostly rebranded drives made by these 3 companies.
I can’t help with any lost data, I hope you have backups. As far as your financial loss, check the warranty on your drive. Many have terms of 3 or 5 years; I specifically buy ones that have longer warranties if I can help it. I normally get Western Digital Black drives.
ETA: here’s a somewhat current failure rate comparison.
Hmm…I thought the drive could be oriented in any position? Not that I move it around a lot in any case.
I’ll check into it, since this drive was one I bought less than two years ago. It’s no longer available on Amazon, so I probably can’t RMA it. I do recall having the option to buy “Backup Insurance” when I bought the larger drive, but that warranty cost something like $99 and only lasted two years, so it didn’t seem worth it. (They try and restore the data for you, and if they can’t, they replace the drive for free – my guess is that getting any actual data back is very rare, though.)
They can be oriented in any position. It is not, however, a good idea to reposition them while they are plugged in and spinning at 5400 RPM. In particular, casually flipping them 180° is not something I’d recommend, having done exactly that in a brainfart event that cost me a nice Micropolis external drive many years ago.
Most power users seem to be recommending that one choose a desired position, then format the disk in that position and keep it in that position subsequently.
It looks like the warranty might be 1 year in North America (depends on region, Asia gets 3). Not very great. But I can’t check for sure because they want the actual serial, not just the model number. You can check the status here: Warranty & Replacements | Support Seagate US
I think you probably just are unlucky. A drive lasting 2.5 years is shorter than expected, but not that much shorter. Getting a few in a row is probably a 0.1% event, but you’re one of many many multiple-hard drive users.
About 10 years ago I had three drives die on me in less than 2 years each. But before or since I’ve been fine (they still die, but they last 5-8 years usually. A reasonable lifetime for an HDD). I haven’t done anything differently. I just got unlucky.
The solution is backups. Just replace the dead drive (under warranty if you’re lucky), restore, and move on.