HD failure Help

Thanks for all the suggestions. It has external power plus the uSB. I've done some googling and it appears that the Free Agent Pros have a common problem of over heating the circuit board. Some suggested taking the drive out and installing in a new enclosure or even internal to computer. I have noticed the two others I have do get real hot. Nothing lost by taking it apart and try the spin as Marcus suggested or hooking up to a different power supply and contoller circuits. It will void warrantes but the data is worth more that the $150.

I always keep the original tapes so in worst case I could try to figure out which footage is on it and start over again. Prices are really coming down on HD's so a couple 1 Tb drives as backups may be a good thing.

Thanks guys,
Don

seems prices of hdd's are going down, but the quality is going along with it :-(. I have drives from 10 years ago that still are kicking, but have had 2 of those 500gig $100 drives crash in the last 3 years. Good luck Don. If it doesn't work out just take a video of smashing it with a baseball bat!

lol that reminds me of the movie "office space", I thought about seriously shooting a stock clip like that with an old fax machine. Arg Scott your trying to hijack this thread aren't you!

Remember an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, a lot of people mistreat their hard drives, they leave them on all the time and they let them overheat, or they dont plug them into surge protectors. Ive used iomega which has a very low failure rate, its a little more expensive but if you treat it right it shouldn't fail. I need to back up my video files, I guess the reason I don't is that it feels like time spent on a losing strategy.... Its almost as if you expect the hard drive to fail, you mistreat it because you know you have a backup, and it fails... its like a self fullfilling prophecy.

I have had only 2 Hard drives in the past that have failed but they were seriously abused. They got exposed to water sand etc.

I had a surge protector go bad one time, it was one of the big batt backup ones and it fried stuff, nice stuff like my HD. Since then basic surge protector...

That no moving parts HD is so much $ you could have 3- 1,000 gig drives.

Oh yeah, im not talking about the back power supply things with the battery and all, just the power cord that limits the amount of electricity for storms and stuff. Also those SSD drives have come down in price, the listed price on the site I mentioned is old. I think the 100gb costs more like 500 bucks still expensive though, but at least it wont fail. In the future they will undoubtly replace HDD because the price continues to fall. When I fill up my iomega I was thinking about getting an SSD.

If I'm not mistaken, I should be able to remove the actual hard drive from the case and install it into another case with it's new power supply and controller? This way if it's only a power supply or controller issue the drive may work ok. Do ya'll think a certain type or brand of new case enclosure is needed for this Free Agent Pro USB/eSATA hard drive? Or is this a waste of time and money trying?

Take the drive out of the case and see what its actual interface really is. It may be a simple stat drive or even an older IDE drive - I would then try to install it as the second drive in an actual computer.

Another note: The theory of shutting down drives every day is one I have to disagree with. Having been an ISP (hosting) - our servers run 24/7/365 - I have drives that have been running almost 10 years without a hickup. I also have a freeagent 750 running here on my desktop and it has not been powerless for over a year and half. The problem with turning drives off is that when they are fired up, that is when the stress really happens. There is a voltage spike, there is friction and hence more wear and tear than if it is just left on. Of course I have everything on an APC battery backup with conditioning as well. (Totally oversized for what I need so that if there is a blackout, it gives me plenty of time to take action if needed.)

Just my 10 cents - from my experiences.

hmm I was told that the longer a drive is left on the more likely it is to fail because its the constant spinning and heat. I don't know enough about the mechanics except that the flash drives don't have any wear and tear.

I guess the most important thing is to buy a high quality drive. I know someone who bought 3 Lacie drives and ALL of them failed. ouch! He bought 2 (one for backup) and another when the first died, but they all ended up dying.

500 bucks for 100 gig it would cost me a crazy amount of money to back up like that. You can always back up to DVD and HD. Or just scene files on DVD

Yeah its still too much now, I remember 2 years ago 128 MB usb flash drives used to be 100 bucks and a few months ago I got a 1 gig usb flash drive for 25 bucks. So In a year or so the 100gb flash drive should be a lot cheaper.