Should I bin this drive?

Dewotter · 11 Dec 2012 at 18:54

I have an external hard drive that suddenly started being a little louder than normal. Not long after, it took a long time to show in the Finder on my Mac and in Windows Explorer - the drive is 50/50 split HFS+ and NTFS.

I managed to copy what was needed and have left it a few days. Disk Utility on the Mac told me to format the drive, which I have done but obviously I'm a little concerned about trusting it.

Below is a screenshot from CrystalDiskInfo. Is there any hope for it or should I just spend the Christmas money on a new one?

bremen1874 · 11 Dec 2012 at 23:45

If you can't trust it then get rid.

You may be able to mount a bare drive in the existing enclosure to save some money, although I'd be tempted to go for a new USB3.0 version.

Dewotter · 12 Dec 2012 at 01:39

Yeah was pretty much what I was thinking.

The current setup is USB3 but neither my PC or laptop can take advantage.

CaptainCrash · 12 Dec 2012 at 14:48

bremen1874 said:
You may be able to mount a bare drive in the existing enclosure to save some money, although I'd be tempted to go for a new USB3.0 version.

I don't think this would save much, if anything - external hard drives currently seem to be a bit cheaper than their internal (bare drive) equivalents, for reasons which aren't entirely clear to me.

RKO said:
The current setup is USB3 but neither my PC or laptop can take advantage.

FWIW I've seen 4-port USB3 PCIe expansion cards going for a tenner or less (new) on the bay, could be worth a punt if you don't have native USB3 capability.