Why I'm done with portable hard drives

portable usb drive failures

It seems that there is a wide difference in opinion out there, all based on subjective experience, about the reliability of portable USB drives. It's also been speculated that forum comments often only reflect the problem cases on any subject (and a few happy campers on the opposite end of the continuum). In other words, we bitch when it's painful, but don't bother to speak up when we are in the pleasure garden.
It's hard to consider that USB drives simultaneously suck and are the greatest invention since the napkin. It stands to reason that user habits, and very likely OS problems, have a great deal more to do with reported drive failure than drive quality itself.
One wouldn't knock around their internal drives, yet I see people constantly banging their USB drives around while moving them in/out of laptop cases at their nearest wi-fi coffee stand. Sometimes they don't even bother to use soft cases to protect them. And there is the instance of moving them around while connected. C'mon, what do you expect?
Yes, there will always be cases of true drive failure, but adjustment of one's user habits will alleviate much of the problem. I have three USB drives (Iomega and WD), going on three years, never a glitch. I baby them.

go for mac

go for mac

Am I the exception here?

I think it's time I start buying lottery tickets or something...because I've used at least a dozen USB drives in the last 5 yrs and I can't remember a single one dying.

I don't rely on these things to store my daily backups...I store my daily backups to Amazon S3 via our Backazon backup software.

I DO store my machine image backups on these and I always have 2 backup drives per machine. These are rotated to off-site locations.

Yes...that means I'm a backup fanatic...but isn't that appropriate since my company makes backup software. :)

External Hard Drive Woes

I have only had two external hard drives (1 320G Maxtor and 1Tb Western Digital). They both completely failed within a couple of months of purchase. Even if they are "recoverable," which I'm not even willing to spend the time on this necessity, it's ridiculous to even think I need to this early after purchase. DO NOT PURCHASE THESE DEVICES TO STORE ANYTHING YOU REALLY CARE ABOUT! They will fail...too much on the internet and websites like this pointing in that direction.

I have had 2 WDs, 1 maxtor,

I have had 2 WDs, 1 maxtor, 1 bufallo and 1 iomega - they have all died. 1 day plug em in and theyre fine, the next not a bean - nothing to do with not recognising they just dont even power up and its nothing to do with fuses or mode of use as I treat them with kid gloves and rarely ever use them anyway. For me they are all rubbish but what else can you do till blue ray recorders are available at a sensible price?

I just bought a portable

I just bought a portable hard drive (WD) and i am now trusting it with my entire photo collection... what is the general life span of portable hard drives, because I don't mind upgrading every now and then, but i do with to upgrade BEFORE my data becomes unrecoverable...

Probably the OS

I think it has more to do with the OS than the physical characteristics of the drive. I'm using a WD passport on Linux with absolutely no issues.

portable hard drives

I have two WD portable hard drives (about the size of a deck of cards) that I drag back and forth from work and whenever I travel, as well as two larger models that I use at work and with my desktop at home. I've had the small portable hard drives for 1 year, and the two larger portables for 2 years, and have never had a problem (the larger ones aren't moved much). I did have a Maxtor that crashed 6 months after I got it, so I've stopped using them. I only keep my work files on these drives, not any program files, and use a program called GoodSync to periodically back-up files that I've worked on at home or at the office. Because this program is so easy to use, and asks me which direction I want to copy the file in when both files have been modified, I have all of my data backed-up on these 4 portable drives, as well as my desktop hard drive at home. My files are far to big to move around easily on flash drives and sometimes, when I get home, I find that I need to use another file that I'd worked on earlier. With GoodSync, everything is backed-up at the end of work on one of my portable drives to take home with me. I couldn't live without 'em.

"My questions are: 1) do

"My questions are: 1) do portable USB drives fail at far higher rates than internal drives?; 2) If so, why?; and 3) Are USB drive failures radically under-reported in the industry?"

1) Yes!
2) They are portable - and are knocked around. NEVER move a spinning drive.
3) No more so than internal drives - but those are radically under-reported also.

Before going to a forensic recover house - try Spinrite on the seemingly-dead drive. It's worked on three drives for me and is a LOT cheaper than darta-recovery houses.