Read this if you have a Seagate External HDD

[Monster]

True, there are many statistics online which shows seagate HD's have much more failure but also to take it into account that they are more used earlier so higher percentage comes from there too. I use mostly WDs but because of this donor disk issue I always buy two HDs from the same batch so atleast I have a donor disk when it is required.

[krishnanv]

I just had a Sandisk Extreme 500GB SSD fail on me.

While speaking to the recovery tech , he said easier to recover data from HDD than SSD.

Stellar data was able to recover my data from the crashed SSD. Very expensive proposition but had to  be done.

So anything can fail anytime, do have working backup strategy :-)

[Bharat Varma]

I guess I'm one of the fortunate ones. I can't remember when my last HDD failure was (I guess more than 15 years ago, TOUCHWOOD!!)

Thanks to the OP + others for sharing about HDD failures and (painful) recovery journey.

I'd like to add that for the last 7 years or so, I've been using an internal Seagate Archival 8TB HDD (in an external enclosure) as my master backup. Yes, it has SMR technology but I wanted large backup capacity. Sure, its a slow drive but considering its primary usage is for backup, I can start the incremental backup process and do other things. And this drive has had a fall of 2 feet from a table. So, I have 2 more exact backups on a number of smaller capacity drives (seagate + hitachi) that I've accumulated over the years. I wont go into my backup process as the OP clearly mentioned not to.

Backup processes are quite critical to all computer users today, so please add your inputs to the one I've just started here -

https://forum.jjmehta.com/index.php/topic,68400.0.html

[manoj]

I guess I'm one of the fortunate ones. I can't remember when my last HDD failure was (I guess more than 15 years ago, TOUCHWOOD!!)

Thanks to the OP + others for sharing about HDD failures and (painful) recovery journey.

I'd like to add that for the last 7 years or so, I've been using an internal Seagate Archival 8TB HDD (in an external enclosure) as my master backup. Yes, it has SMR technology but I wanted large backup capacity. Sure, its a slow drive but considering its primary usage is for backup, I can start the incremental backup process and do other things. And this drive has had a fall of 2 feet from a table. So, I have 2 more exact backups on a number of smaller capacity drives (seagate + hitachi) that I've accumulated over the years. I wont go into my backup process as the OP clearly mentioned not to.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Thank you. I have two external backup drives. One is written to every time I do any work or photo stuff. With increasing file sizes, that is often "GB level data transfer." And evry week or so, they get swapped, so the other drive has multiple GBs to catch up.

[DeepakS]

Thanks for sharing. Very useful information

[mahesh]

Thanks for sharing. I will add few points based on my experience.

1. WD is more reliable. That's established but I would reiterate. As mentioned their Black/Gold ones are most reliable but quite costly. Their MTTF (Mean time to failure) is quite large compared to normal (Blue/green) disks.

2. I checked about Blu Ray M-disks but could not take plunge due to higher cost and doubts about availability of reader in future. But still thinking about it. However, they make very compelling case for them. So if you can afford it, go for it.

3. If you have External drive, use it once in couple of months for at least some GB level data transfer (R/W) to avoid mechanical failure. I did that mistake and lost three disks at a time.

4. WD drives gives you access to free Acronis True Image Software. It is one of the best solutions for disk level backups. You need at least one WD drive connected.

5. SSD are not as reliable as they are thought out to be. Backup is only way. At present, SSD costs so much that we can buy extra HDD just for backup of that disk.

[raul]

Is SSD failure possible? What are the chances?

SSD death rate is quicker than HDD and as far as HDD's are concerned, external's die quick than the internals, lost 2 externals within a span of 3 years, 4TB worth of hard work  :'(

[Gajadi]

Is SSD failure possible? What are the chances?

[Dr.Devesh]

Few months back my WD hdd failed .. it did fall a couple of times ...local shops who would outsource quoted me 25 k .. but better to contact directly.. would contact the company as mentioned in pune ..TFS