I have several computers — all of the PC variety — and until recently, my two main computers each had one of these hooked up to it. If you don't want to bother clicking, I'll tell you what those are: They're Maxtor OneTouch™ Turbo Edition External Hard Drives. A quick survey of my computer-savvy amigos told me (and still tells me) that they're pretty good units; that while any piece of hardware can fail, the Maxtor Externals are as reliable as anything else even vaguely in that price range. I asked around and kept hearing, "It's very rare that those crash."
Well, not around here, it isn't. I've bought three of them and two have gone kablooey in the last month. One was about two years old but the other lasted a mere four weeks, during most of one of which it was unused because I was outta town. Shortly after my return, it began emitting the blood-curding, sad "Click of Death" that means Trouble Right Here in River City. Both are under warranty so they will be replaced by…the same thing. That isn't as maddening as it might sound because I really don't know of anything better I can buy. I just need to be more conscientious about backups. I lost some things because I got busy and foolishly postponed my own backup routine.
On the first one that failed, there was one clump of files that I really wanted back. They could be replaced but I'd have to do a load of manual work to get them back to the form in which they were last seen. So I took the Maxtor over to a friend/computer consultant who spent many days and charged me a large fee to recover all the data on the hard drive. And he did…but not one of the "recovered" files was readable. What I got back was 750 gb of files that would no longer open. I then purchased File Scavenger, a piece of software which cost a paltry fifty bucks. It's not a complete life saver but it did enable me to recover about 600 gb of files and they were like new and readable. Alas, the most-desired files were in the absent 150.
So I bit the bullet, did all the work and restored the files the hard way and of course, promptly backed them up to a brand-new Maxtor…and that was the second one that failed. Which was annoying but not fatal because I'd also backed them up to DVDs. I have, for obvious reasons, become Backup Crazy. In fact, this message is taking a beastly long time to write because I have to stop every five words and back it all up to disc.
There's not much else to say about this except to remind you (and especially me) that hardware does fail and you need to always be prepared for it. I also wanted to recommend File Scavenger, which could save you beaucoup bucks if and when you have a crash. Don't bother writing me and telling me of your good experiences with this Seagate or that Western Digital. I no longer want to believe that any brand is highly reliable because that'll just make me complacent and lazy about backups. In fact, I'm even going to get the words "if and when" out of my vocabulary on this topic. I'm going to presume there's no "if," just a "when."