Bought one a week ago to backup PC and store extra files. Woke up a day ago to the 'click of death'. Drive not recognized. Tried everything suggested to no avail. Took it back and the wonderful guy at Office Depot managed to retrieve my files, and confirm the drive was bad.
I got to looking at it and realized it was just like the one I'd bought about a year ago to hook up to the Tivo. It to lasted about a month, then died with every freakinh' season finale on it, including the final episode of Lost

Anyway, what I find out from all these forums is this is a regular occurrence and sometimes it can be resolved, but I don't know why such a reputable company as Seagate would put out something they know is faulty. (There is problem with the power connection in the base was what we finally decided was happening)

I ended up with a Western Digital. I told the guy, I have this other portable drive I've had for years. It's been banged around, it's set for hours in a car in 100 degree weather, and it's never had a blip.

Just my opinion, but if you value your data, it's best to research this before buying.

:::SIGH::::
i understand your frustration but your experiance is too limited to make a statement like that.

the truth is both seagate and WD fail exactly the same amount. and the last 18 months both fail rates have decreased a good amount.

my experiance: 400 drives a month WD (video) and Seagate (audio)

personally i would never buy a "Brand" name external like that.
a Siig External Bay with a drive of your choice is a better option.

Scott
ADK

Well for mission-critical storage (and I wouldn't consider the final episode of Lost that - esp. I beleive in the US you can re-download purchased vids from iTunes), I'd never have anything less than a mirror cluster of two drives.
There are some factory-made, USB-connectable RAID boxes around that you can "fill up" with standard SATA drives, or if price and functionality overrules looks and noise level, you can build a small PC, stuff it chock full of storage, and install a Linux storage server.

I have a few WDs that seem to be just fine, but I have never been able to fully trust any external. It just makes sense to me that they will eventually fukk up.

Wooooah.
That would give you a pretty unique perspective on very current fail rates.
Cool.

I had a Western Digital, lasted 13 months, just beyond the warranty.

Now I use USB Flashdrives, storage purpose only.

Was it a portable GoFlex?

I bought one a while back. (3 tera) Maybe I should look for other means of backup.

Yeah experience varies.
I had a WD external (the clunky messy one),2 TB and it failed on me 4-5 months after buying it (no refund since I order from the US so I ain't shipping anything back for guarantee obviously).
So I'd say I trust WD no more.
Then I had an internal Seagate Barracuda for years and never failed (1 TB and 500 GB).

But in any case any drive can fail so perhaps and if cheaper, an "internal" HD with a cheap external enclosure would be better.

BUT I have the feeling internal drives would tend to fail less because they get their power from the PSU, instead of the untrustful USB power ports that tend to fail (unless it's AC-powered like my diseased WD external, but then it failed...).

So all and all, just make sure to always carry a 1-1 copy of whatever info you have, and chances for BOTH drives failing is certainly low (YES, there are earthquakes and all bla bla bla take it with a grain of salt).
The best choice is always an offsite backup solution, but it's expensive for us home users.

I have the 2TB Seagate GoFlex(Desktop version) for work, and have had no issues with it. It's actually been a very good drive.

Of course, I've had a lot of success with Seagate and generally go with them for everything for consistency(it makes sense, since I've had good luck with them). I currently have the work drive, plus two external Seagate drives that I've had for at least 2 years each(one of them for around 4-5), plus both my system and samples internal drives on my desktop are Seagate Barracuda drives.

Outside of a bad sector on one that I quickly replaced through Tiger Direct, they have been flawless. Not a single bad sector on ANY of my drives, and no sign of failure any time soon using SMART analysis and other HD benchmarks.

So basically I say all this to mean that while all drives to have problems, I doubt this is a Seagate-only thing. Just the way it goes. I do worry at times about the various connectors involved with the GoFlex bases, so maybe that is a bigger problem. But I haven't seen it yet.

Brent

Talking about external drives, about 3 years ago I bought a 250Gb portable Iomega, that worked flawlessly, with just one usb plug conected, for one year and a half or something. Then it stopped working. Later I found out that if the damn thing is in a good mood and the two usb plugs conected, maybe it would start working after a while. More recently (7-8 months ago?) I bought a 500Gb Memup (also portable) that has been working fine so far (just 1 usb plug). Now I'm considering to buy a 2 gb external desktop drive to backup my hard drive and the portable usb thing. Do you have any sugestion?

ideally yes a raid 5 or even raid 6 NAS/ or ext storage
this is beyond what most will spend (well at least until they lose their data one time)

a Stardom SOHORAID SR4 is very affordable and fill it with your own 4 drives. i would do WD simply due to 5yr warranty vs seagates 1yr..

but alas most people wont do this but will have no issue buying more gear..

Scott
ADK

I have stopped completely using Internal HD's except for the System disk.
My comp is on almost all the time and heat would kill the harddrives faster than i could buy them.

After i started using external USB harddrives my HD failure ratio went down about 50% - 75%.

On the other hand i still buy at least 2 harddrives a year due to the size of files filling up. Too lazy to actually sort the damn mess on the hard drives

No, I don't think portable, as it had it's own power supply. Well, I'm disappointed to know this about failure rates, but I'm running out of room - I say I am, I have 30GB left,on the main drive. The wave files eat it up like nobody's business. I guess the only super safe thing to do is backup on DVD/CD because I have those and the one's I made 10 years ago still work.

Can't you convert them into flac?. Hosts are begining to support this too.

2TB Goflex here, 24/24 7/7 on for nearly two years, no issues so far.