WHY DO EXTERNAL HDDs FAIL

Is it just me or do external HDDs fail at an alarming rate? Am I doing something wrong?
Should I safely remove before unplugging? WTFFF

>*clicks*

Nothing personnel, kiddo.

Yes. Also use dock.

>Should I safely remove before unplugging
yes. Otherwise head will not park

They overheat and get knocked about more. Also the manufacturers select their cheapest lowest quality drives so they can sell the packaged unit for cheap.

>Is it just me or do external HDDs fail at an alarming rate?
Do you throw them into your bag then walk around town without a care in the world?

It's not the 1980s anymore.

Heat is the biggest killer of HDs. But the number of start/stop cycles is another biggie.
Leave the drive running in a well-ventilated case (and put up with the noisy fan).
I wonder how a Peltier device would go as a silent cooler.

I just plug them in then set them aside on a desk when I'm not using them.

really?

>Is it just me or do external HDDs fail at an alarming rate? Am I doing something wrong?
yes, its because the cases are ventilated and the hard drives over heat. you can generally check the max temp the drive has seen over its lifetime with smart to verify this

>Should I safely remove before unplugging? WTFFF
yes you retard

docks over heat too

>cases are ventilated
cases are not ventilated

>all these morons claiming it's heat death
no you asshats it's because people move them around while their in use

I don't think I've ever "safely removed" a flash drive and I've never had a problem. But with externals they die in a few months of minor, minor use at most.

Are they mounted differently or some shit?

>tfw ready to be called retarded again

I have a Toshiba Canvio and a Seagate Backup Plus, 6 and 5 year old respectively and both are still running pretty fine. Dunno how you people kill your external disks so easily.

stop using the thing as a gyroscope to spin you around in your chair

You would still need a fan to move the heat away from the hot side of the peltier device

i only use it to spin my hastune miku figurine around so i think that's okay

I have had the same lacie for 12 years. No issues. It even has a seagate drive in it. But I always remove it safely and try to handle it gently. Although this drive has seen a couple of plane trips too.

>Heat is the biggest killer of HDs.
Actually fluctuating temperatures is what kills drives, running drives in a server 24/7 at 40 degrees is not an issue, but connecting and disconnecting all day with temps changing between 20 to 40 degrees is.

>>tfw ready to be called retarded again
You are. Thumb drives rarely have onboard RAM cache, HDDs do. When you choose safely unplug disk, then it flushes the contents of that RAM to disk.

When you say die do you mean file system corruption resulting in the lost data, or the disk itself dying permanetly.

Safely removing resolves the first issue, proper ventilation resolves the seond.

When I said die I actually meant file system corruption/pc only being able to read the data for 10-20 seconds before the disk is removed

Stop knocking into it jackass.

then yes, you're a retard for not clicking safety unplug this disk. i bet you're the same kind of retard who just holds down their power button to shut off their computer rather than waiting the minute to do so properly.

Yes... This is the principal reason.
The heat comes after.

I thought "safely remove" was just a meme