What's the life expectancy of the Western Digital My Passport Essential USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive: I'm looking to store mainly pictures and important documents and was wondering how long can one of these hold data before I should worry about backing...
1728998
2 years max. If you leave it on all the time or travel with it, probably just over a year. It's not clear to me your exact setup - if this is a backup of a laptop or a desktop and if this is a disk that stays in one place or travels with you. Sadly, of 2 different brands of disks I have purchased in the last 3 years, most have them have failed around the 1 year mark. (I had a pair of Iomega disks fail within a week of each other at the 1 year mark, a WD disk I bought 6 months ago just failed) My general backup strategy is 2 identical disks (currently 1TB) that stay in my home office where I store pictures, music, documents, etc.. 1 disk is a backup of the other. Anything important is backed up to the 2 disks that stay at home. I use my WD 320 to bring copies of files and music/films along with me on trips. Keep in mind that if you are using your WD 320 as a backup of your laptop and take it on a trip and your bag gets stolen or the disk gets dropped and breaks, you are without a backup.
1667133
I've looked into that and without the original sales receipt it would be reckoned from the date burned into the ROM. You would have 5 years from that date. I found this out by having a drive without a receipt and needing service. WD is so much better than Seagate. I've only had one that I needed service and almost all Seagate drives died within a couple of months for the warranty expiring. 5 years is forever in terms of drives. I got the 2GB version and on a 6Gb channel it's almost as fast as a USB3 flash drive. maybe faster. In short-it screams!
1183720
9-11 years if you write 50 Gigabytes of data to it everyday :)Don't worry about reading data from it, flash devices (like an SSD) have basically an infinite number of read cycles. Hope this helped!
691901
Unfortunately, there probably are those occasions where items just malfunction. I have not had that experience to date (fingers crossed), but these external hard drives all seem to eventually die. The best back-up is to have two and to also use some type of internet or Cloud back up for important files and documents.
1502981
Hi, unfortunately I'm not able to ensure how long it would last but I can tell you, I've been dealing with Seagate drives for years and I have never had a problem. I've been using this particular one for a couple of months now and it has been working perfectly. It is powered externally, not thru the USB, that's one thing that guarantees a better performance and long-lasting life.
402921
At this moment I am pulling data off an external USB drive that appeared to be totally dead. Clack, click, whiirrrrrrrr and never came online. I froze it. Not kidding: http://www.emergingtechs.com/posts/put-your-hard-drive-in-the-freezer-to-recover-data/ Mine works for about 1/2hr until the drive warms up again, then back into the freezer. Given this scenario it makes sense to know what is critical, get it first, and get the non-essential stuff later. All my important stuff is already recovered and now I'm copying over 40GB of "nice to have" stuff. As soon as this process is over I'm going to improve my backup scenario!
398548
3-year limited warranty. If you go to the website I am sure they have a contact number, or email them and hopefully they will replace your product. mine still working, but for sure is not my favorite hard drive, I rather buying the passport external hard drive. I had one of those for 5 year now and is still alive.
1294498
Im not sure. But i do not recommend this one. I put so much info on it and one day it just wouldnt work. It woukd spin but no lights or anything on the screen. Had to pay 50$ to get the files off if it. I say spend that extra 50 now and buy a WD passport. Works like a charm.
1162992
Works great for me. Have 6. We are photography studio. Use them for storing images and templates used in daily tuning of studio. So they are plugged in/out often. We keep all our photoshop stuff on one drive, to keep off workstation. It is used with both workstations & laptop. Switching between the three often. Never issue. I do, however, replace those drives as well. If it's a drive that gets a lot of use, I replace it every 18 months. Just to be safe.
565786
If you Google the question, it still remains to be seen if the data after 25-50 years is still completely intact. There are numerous factors that can affect this, ie., how they are stored (such as upright in their case, humidity free, etc.) gravity, how they have been handled, manufacturer quality control, etc. If you want long life, I would look into archival gold dvd's. Their quality and life expectancy is rated higher than these standard disks. I have used hundreds of these disks over a decade but could not begin to know how long they will last, even handling and storing them properly.
2101581
I have not tied that specific drive but used Western Digital 500 gb, Acomdata 120 gb and some USB thumb drives. Everything worked fine. I think as long as the hard drive can be connected via USB 2.0 it should work.
1013009
Western Digital is one of the best hard drives. I can tell you that I always buy western digital hd I have about 6 hard drives and only one failed but the great news is the kind of warranty about 1 to 3 years for replacement and that hd that failed I sent it to the warranty and they gave me a new one...
1102436
Sounds like a warrant problem. If I read the Western Digital warranty policy correctly, it states that the Western Digital Blue hard drives come with a 2 year warranty. Check with Amazon regarding their return/ exchange policy.
285312
You will find only negatives answer questions like this. I've had the 128gb model for over a year. I'm a photographer, i keep my lightroom catalog on it and all of my current working files. I transfer large amounts of data between this and my home network as i work, along with editing the files directly on the flash drive. Bottom line is this drive gets used very heavily. Still going strong.
423793
I use a thumb drive I'm on my western digital units. The largest one I used was a 64 gig and it use it with no problem.
1390987
My fifth generation's hard drive is on the way out after two and a half years. I had a 4th generation that lasted less than two years before the drive died, luckily covered by credit card extended warranty. I don't think these things are great buys if you expect them to last more than 3 years.
1819658
I have two, one for the laptop and one for the desktop. I've had both for about 8 months, and not a single problem. These things can take more of a beating than regular HDDs (not like you should be beating them:( )but alas, as with all technology, some do fail. I'm good so far though! Not packing them full of files helps.