[Jump]

LOL, the seagate drives out now are crap. I have never had a western digital fail so I stick with them. Sounds like operator error. Did it get too warm in your lap or something?

[Ambrosius]

Whatever happened to Conner and Maxtor, were they bought out?

[Jump]

Maxtor is still around I believe. They seem to have settled into the world of selling to the average Joe at Staples and such. You don't seem them listed as great deals to often at slickdeals.net or other deal sites. I imagine there are though.

[netburnr]

So I came home to a nice memory fault (XP BSOD) error and my computer looping some kinda crapped out beep sound effect...nice

Originally Posted by netburnr

Well it wasn't showing up as a network share

Originally Posted by Jump

Did it get too warm in your lap or something?

Its connected to my PC via Firewire...

I'm pulling the drives now and putting them in my other external case to figure out which is at fault.

The question now...

Should I replace the failed drive with another 500 and keep going...

Or should I get 2 1GB drives and have a TB of redundant storage?

on a side not, damn I'm glad I splurged a year ago and got the dual drive system.

Thats right, I said this drive is almost exactly 13 months old...fraking 1 year warranties. Speaking of, who has the best warranties these days?

[netburnr]

Well I got it apart...what a crappy design.

The hard drives very hot to the touch....I'm really beginning to question how well the cooling in these thinks work...

[Jump]

WD is a 3 year warranty I believe. Many people just buy those things to take the drives out. Sounds like you need a media center not a little hard drive enclosure.

[Jump]

Here you go. I see good reviews about these all the time.
Vantec NexStar SATA External Drive Dock

[netburnr]

The drive that failed is in between the bottom drive and the controller at the top of the case...so I'm definitely leaning towards heat as the killer here.

And WD external HDs have a 1 year limited warranty.

As for that HD dock, I have no need for that, I simply unplugged one drive at a time, the first try was the failed drive and windows performed its normal puke, so I turned it all off, swapped which drive was installed and rebooted, its now acting fine but the button is flashing and the "Button Manager" app in the system tray is warning me its in "degraded" mode. According to the built in help file all I have to do is put in a new disk and it will start replicating the data again, and even will allow me to access the data while it does its work for 6-12 hours.

So long story straight, I got this exploded hard drive sitting on my desk and I need to either pick up a new 500gb drive or pick up 2 1gbs and rebuild...now the question is, should I go ahead and upgrade...

I have a media PC, but it uses my main computer and network shares to watch all the data I have. I'd much rather have all my data on one system than have HDs with TV over there and HDs with movies over here, and blah blah...

[Jump]

Well, with the item I posted above, which you quickly assumed was to fix your problem, you just plug in the HD that has the media you want to watch and unplug it when your done.

There are some WD 500 GB drives listed at SlickDeals for $89. Want me to find the deal?

But you can get the WD 640 two spindle drives for about $100 now which is the best drive out. I have two of those and also just installed one in my oldest sons computer when we went to see him Saturday. They rock and the read times are as good as the Raptor's.

[netburnr]

Define best drive out there?

Is this it?

I'm just concerned that an extra 140gb is gonna get tore up easily with the season's shows alone... I was hoping to go 1TB so I could last another full year...

However, I'm not willing to plunk down 400 bucks right now, I think I'd rather have a car and electricity...

[Jump]

Model: WD6400AAKS

Yes that's it.

How do I define it? well, at all the sites that let customers post negative comments, such as Amazon and Newegg, it is rated a 5 out of 5. And all the deal sites I got to every day it is the most desired drive. It get's thumbs up when the troublesome 1T drives get thumbs down.

I also define it by it's tech. It is a two platter drive with 320 GB of PMR technolog for greater areal density for fast read/writes and long wear. Less platters = less spinning objects = less moving heads = less wear and tear = less $$ and .

Great slick deal thread on it. Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB OEM - $110(newegg) or $107(Chiefvalue AC) - free shipping - SlickDeals.net Forums

Here they are at Newegg best price around. Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

You can get it from Chief Value as well for the same and sometimes dropping lower. They are owned by Newegg and it ships from the same warehouse. Shopping,buy 7200 RPMWestern DigitalSATA 3.0Gb/sCaviar SE16640GBWD6400AAKS - OEM at ChiefValue.com