I'm looking into finally getting a big external hard disk (will probably be usb-connectable) but I recently heard that 1TB (or bigger) external disks are prone to overheating and, eventually, stop functioning exactly because of that.
Now I'm planning to buy a good quality disk, probably something from the Western Digital My Book series, but the overheating rumors are heard got me worried.
Has anyone had similar experience of external hard drives failing because of overheating, supposedly because they are 1TB or more? And, while still on the topic, any feedback on the my book series especially?
Answer
Relying on a single hard disk to keep your data safe is UNWISE. Either backup regularly so a failure is little more than an annoyance, or use RAID.
All drives WILL fail. If not kept cool, all drives will fail sooner than later.
Drives should not fail too soon if you keep them cool (35-45 degrees C). But the could. I've had new drives that were DOA. There's no reason you can't too. Just buy a drive with AT LEAST a 3 year warranty. (I just bought a 1TB drive for my own backups and I've got two 1.5 TB drives for my media archive). My only requirement in buy a drive is a 3 year+ warranty. I don't care who made it. Think about it - they'll have to replace the drive if it fails before then, so producing bad drives does nothing more than cost a company more money (especially when they have a three year warranty). And keep in mind something else - EVERYONE will make bad drives from time to time. EVERYONE. EVERYONE will have bad batches and botched firmware. That's why you use RAID and have backups. That's why you DO NOT trust the drive - EVER - to be the sole thing to keep your data safe.
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