Man I don't even know where to start, my drives are failing one after the other and my latest drive i bought just over two months ago failed on me last night (2tb pretty much full). i had another fail on me not long ago which was the 4tb version but managed to fix it. i'm beyond upset so thinking i should stop all of this (at least for a while) but i just can't get over it.

In my experience, drives at or close to capacity are far more likely to fail. It may also be possible some of the files are corrupted. A drastic change in temperature can also warp the storage drive as well (Hot or Cold).

...Or it could just be freakishly bad luck on your part. I feel you on that if it is true. About 10 years back, I went through 6 Flash Drives in 4 months. They just randomly decided they didn't feel like working anymore and all shortly after I bought them. One failed on me 3 days after the purchase, which was $100. Pissed me off, it did.

Temps in your computer or if using external drives its enclosure and airflow around the drive are going to be the biggest enemies. No airflow means higher temps and more likely to fail. The primary drive i use to store my images is a 750GB Western Digital Caviar drive I bought back in 2009. Keep it cool. Make sure youve got a surge protector for it to plug in to if its an external or for you comp if its internal. Make sure your fans are blowing enough air into your case and manage temps across your board and HDs.

Personally, I've quit fucking around with hard drives except for backups and have gone purely SSD. SSDs are really coming down in price.

After having a supposedly brand new mechanical HDD die on me after only a few months, I switched to SSDs and microSD cards and haven't looked back.

(December 19, 2018, 8:16 pm)AndreSerizawa In my experience, drives at or close to capacity are far more likely to fail. It may also be possible some of the files are corrupted. A drastic change in temperature can also warp the storage drive as well (Hot or Cold).

...Or it could just be freakishly bad luck on your part. I feel you on that if it is true. About 10 years back, I went through 6 Flash Drives in 4 months. They just randomly decided they didn't feel like working anymore and all shortly after I bought them. One failed on me 3 days after the purchase, which was $100. Pissed me off, it did.

i think in my case it might be a bit of both, bad luck and the fact every drive that has failed was either full or almost full. even microSD cards and usb sticks that failed on me in the past were full/almost full.

(December 20, 2018, 12:07 pm)doubleintegral Personally, I've quit fucking around with hard drives except for backups and have gone purely SSD. SSDs are really coming down in price.

(December 20, 2018, 2:31 pm)Milkjetstream After having a supposedly brand new mechanical HDD die on me after only a few months, I switched to SSDs and microSD cards and haven't looked back.

apart from the price, the main reason i don't use SSD's is because i tend to delete alot especially when its almost full and from what heard too many write/delete operations on ssd degrades its performance alot faster than mechanical drive but tbh i need to reasearch it

in relation to my latest drive failure, it just says that the drive is "uninitialized" . i'm not able to fix it because any attempt to repair gives "resource busy" error. tried it on two different laptops with same errors.

(December 20, 2018, 10:01 am)egnever23 Temps in your computer or if using external drives its enclosure and airflow around the drive are going to be the biggest enemies.  No airflow means higher temps and more likely to fail.  The primary drive i use to store my images is a 750GB Western Digital Caviar drive I bought back in 2009.  Keep it cool.  Make sure youve got a surge protector for it to plug in to if its an external or for you comp if its internal.  Make sure your fans are blowing enough air into your case and manage temps across your board and HDs.

...So much this.

It never ceases to amaze me how many folks forget or don't even know something so basic. If your room is hot or humid, move your computer to another room or turn on the Air Conditioning. Don't use a fan as you're simply blowing hot air into the computer at the end of the day. 

If you're constantly hitting capacity then get ALOT of storage devices and split things across them. Overload one storage device and risk losing everything real easy.

(December 20, 2018, 4:16 pm)SweetMilk apart from the price, the main reason i don't use SSD's is because i tend to delete alot especially when its almost full and from what heard too many write/delete operations on ssd degrades its performance alot faster than mechanical drive but tbh i need to reasearch it

I wouldn't worry too much. You can write a LOT of data to an SSD before it goes bad. I've written 14TB to my 500GB SSD and it has 98% of its lifespan left.