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I have a 1TB Western digital and all of a sudden it stopped being recognized by my pc( I was trying to install drivers for my laptop from the drive), tried different ports and even PCs. But nothing worked. Through my googling I tried using chkdsk /f it kept fixing index errors but it has been stuck at 73 percent for more than a day. Out of desperation I used a 'low level formatting' tool called Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool. I can mount the drive again and it seems to work but on the price of losing all my files. So my questions is why did it happen? and if will it break again? Because I wanted a reliable back up in the first place! Thanks!

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External drives break all the time. I assume, partly because they are handled without care. One could argue that they are as durable as any other consumer-grade drives, or that if one always leaves it "on the table", then it's perfectly safe. However, their intended use exposes them to:

  • dropping
  • bumping
  • more frequent spin-up (power on)
  • sudden temperature changes
  • overheating

The last point is due to the poor quality of the enclosure many of these drives come in.

To answer your question:

It happened because hard drives in general are known to be unreliable. It was probably some kind of mechanical error caused either by you, or by the disc being worn out. A year is enough for a disk to be worn out. A significant percentage of discs break even before 12 months of operation.

To try and determine the cause of the failure, you could run a S.M.A.R.T health test on the hard drive with either the manufacturer supplied software, or some independent software.

If your disc is damaged, then it will certainly malfunction again. Even if it is not, it will die within 3-7 years. I could be wrong, but having a paranoid mind-set when it comes to storage is prudent.

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Sounds like your file system was corrupted. (assuming windows)If you remove the USB drive without hitting the safely remove (or eject) button in your taskbar, the OS won't unmount the drive properly, which could cause file system errors. If you're adventurous Linux tends to be able to read such corrupted file systems and you can usually pull your data off without having to format in the future. Will it happen again? hard to say.

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  • Well, I tried using backtrack 5, it said it was unable to mount and recommended chkdsk /f as well! but thanks! Mar 15, 2013 at 17:18

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