When my drive crashed, I did some research. I hadn't researched Western Digital, Seagate, or other brand reliability numbers in a few years. I was very surprised to learn that my experience was far from unique. Your model may be better or you may just be lucky.



>Because your drive crashed, they're a bad company? Maybe I have just been lucky (shrug).
>
>>WESTERN DIGITAL??? YIKES! What is the warranty on it? I switched from Western Digital back to Seagate when my last Western Digital hard drive crashed at 368 days. The warranty was only 1 year.
>>
>>
>>>>>>>One thing I know for sure is this will never happen again, and then I won't have to worry about such decisions. There are going to be multiple forms of backup, including DVDs (Ghost) and offsite storage in the event of fire or burglary.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>There are only 2 types of people:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>- True Believers in backup
>>>>>>- Those who are about to become True Believers
>>>>>>
>>>>>>;-)
>>>>>
>>>>>The disappointing part is I already was a true believer, running an automated backup program every night. What I have learned is my approach was not sophisticated enough, with enough layers of redundancy.
>>>>
>>>>Probably some corollary of Murphy's law:
>>>>Your backup problems will be shown to you if you sufficiently depend on your files.
>>>
>>>
>>>My external drive, the doomed backup drive, is a Western Digital My Book. The slogan on the box is apropos: "Put your life on it."
>>>
>>>Actually I now have a second My Book. I was in Best Buy yesterday and saw the 500 GB model on sale for $129. To date I have not been backing up the Mac at all, since there is little or no data other than music. But then I remembered the countless hours I spent shuffling CDs in and out of it to record close to 1000 music CDs into iTunes (and from there onto an iPod). Do I want to do that again? No, sir. $129 is cheap insurance.