Hey guys,

this is my first post here. I have an unusual (or maybe not) situation. I had 3 hard drive failures in the past year. All of them related to the hard drive that holds my downloaded content, home videos, pictures and music. basically the files for my XBMC and Media Center (excluding recorded TV).

The first two hard drives had it as the source for torrents. So I thought the failures may have been caused by the constant read-writes. When I bought the 3rd hard drive (external Passport), which is only 4 months old, I did make it the default torrent location. . I used another drive that I use for my TV recordings as the source for torrents. When a torrent was complete, I copy the content to the Passport

Regardless of doing this, the new Passport hard drive failed on me 4 months in. This is too much of a coincidence.

The disk shows up in Windows Disk Management as "Disk 2 Not Initialized". I have no option to make it a volume.
R-Studio recognized it but not sure what to do with it
EaseUS did recognize it but only saw 1 PNG file of a picture of a radar (what the hell is this?)

Any help is appreciated. Also saw that my backup disk ran out of space so I probably lost files since the last successful backup. I'm scared of restoring the files to a new disk with the risk of losing it again in a couple of months. This is getting expensive.

EDIT: I did a scan with Rstudio and get Read disk WDMy Passport 07481019 at position 0 failed after 1 attempts. Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (23).

Happens at every position its scanning

Interesting... There are a few details I don't understand in your story, but let's start with some basics. Please give full, clear, and unambiguous answers to the following questions, so that readers here have some more details about your situation:

- Do you still have the first two drives? If so, please collect the full SMART data from them. If you don't still have them, do you have any record of the SMART data from them?

- You've said that the third drive was a WD My Passport. What make & model were each of the two previous drives?

- Is the third drive spinning up normally, or is it quiet (perhaps making a faint beeping sound), or is it clicking, or something else?

- Is the third drive shown in Windows Disk Management with the correct capacity, or is it shown as 2TB even though it isn't, or something else?

- How did the problems start with the third drive? Was everything perfect one day, nothing unusual happened, and it was completely unreadable the next day? Or was there any gradual degradation, or did something unusual happen, or ...? (I can't guess at all possible descriptions of what might have happened (I wasn't there ) so you need to fill-in the gaps, with as many details as possible.)

- What details can you give for the start of the problems with each of the first two drives and subsequent symptoms, similar to the above question about the third drive?

- How often were each of these three drives powered-off (either intentionally, or due to power cuts)?

- What surface were these three drives sitting on, when in use?

Using external drives for long periods does have a risk of shortening their life (e.g. due to overheating), but without more info (and preferably the full SMART data from all three drives), I don't know whether that might apply here.

See answers below:

- Do you still have the first two drives? If so, please collect the full SMART data from them. If you don't still have them, do you have any record of the SMART data from them?

>>Do not have the other two drives

- You've said that the third drive was a WD My Passport. What make & model were each of the two previous drives?

>> Forgot exact models but the last two were internal drives. The first was a 3.5 WD Caviar Green 500GB. The second was a Seagate 2.5 500GB.

- Is the third drive spinning up normally, or is it quiet (perhaps making a faint beeping sound), or is it clicking, or something else?

>>Everything seems to be spinning normally. No clicking sound or strange noise.

- Is the third drive shown in Windows Disk Management with the correct capacity, or is it shown as 2TB even though it isn't, or something else?

>>Its a 750GB drive but showing as Unknown 698.61GB Not Initialized.

- How did the problems start with the third drive? Was everything perfect one day, nothing unusual happened, and it was completely unreadable the next day? Or was there any gradual degradation, or did something unusual happen, or ...? (I can't guess at all possible descriptions of what might have happened (I wasn't there ) so you need to fill-in the gaps, with as many details as possible.)

>>Everything was perfect one day (4/4) and then the next day it did not initilize (4/5). I have a task that shuts down the computer at 2AM and restarts it at 6AM. Looking at the system event logs, on 4/5 start up the disk was healthy (D drive) and then there were IO errors on trying to access it.

- What details can you give for the start of the problems with each of the first two drives and subsequent symptoms, similar to the above question about the third drive?

>>The last drive (Seagate) looked like it was going out. The videos were slow to start. Pictures were taking time to load. I did get some error alerts prior. Was planning to change it out but was too late. However, on that one I was able to get most of the data out with a recovery program. The WD Passport had no signs and the recovery programs can't find any of the files

- How often were each of these three drives powered-off (either intentionally, or due to power cuts)?

>>Shutoff Everyday at 2AM. Restarted at 6AM. That is true for my other drives (OS SSD drive and my Recorded TV drive) and no issues with them.

- What surface were these three drives sitting on, when in use?

>>The previous two were internals and bolted in. The current external Passport is on the computer case (Silverstone HTPC case)

Thanks for your help. How should I get the SMART data?

Thanks for that information.

Some of those points were surprises e.g. the first 2 drives were internal, and were also different makes / models from each other. Unfortunately, since they are no longer available for further testing or collecting their SMART data, I doubt that any conclusive answers for their relatively short drive lifetimes can be established.

I forgot to ask about your other drives (as I hadn't guessed that any of the problem drives were internal, when I replied previously), but you mentioned that your OS is on an SSD and you have a "recorded TV" HDD. Since SSDs have some different causes of failure than HDDs, this does not help to eliminate much from the range of possible causes of the premature failures. That leaves the "recorded TV" drive, as the only HDD which I think you are saying has not failed within a year.

One of the common factors appears to be the internal power supply of that PC - obviously it powered those 2 previous internal drives, and it also powered the external My Passport drive via USB. Just because the "recorded TV" drive has not failed prematurely does not prove that everything is OK in this area, however this isn't top of my list of suspects.

I'm not familiar with that Silverstone PC case (a quick Google seemed to show some different variants of that model), but one area to check is whether any drive slots get reduced airflow, and so those drives run hotter. Again, without the SMART data from the 2 previous internal drives, we don't know whether those drives were getting hot.

There could be (unusual) environmental factors, but overwork (overheating too?) is the biggest concern for the first 2 drives, considering the limited duty-cycle and power-on hours which drive manufacturers use in their specification for normal (non-enterprise) drives. Since those 2 drives failed each within a year, were you able to RMA them?

I think you are saying that the 3rd (external) My Passport drive has been doing less I/O, than the 2 previous internal drives were doing. However it's easier to overheat drives in external enclosures without fans, than internal drives in a ventilated PC case. Let's see if the available SMART data gives any clues. To collect that, you could download HDD Scan (free) from http://hddscan.com. Use that to read the SMART data from the WD My Passport and from your "recorded TV" drive. You can either save those 2 sets of SMART data as files to your OS drive (and then attach those files to your reply), or you could take photos of the SMART data being displayed on the screen (and attach those photos), or you could take Windows screendumps of the SMART data being displayed.