The best alternative to WD externals?

[meig0ittai]

I collect external drives. Currently, I have two 1TB externals making really odd clicking noises and refusing to open some files. Both are Western Digital MyBooks. I also have a 500GB that makes the same noise but isn't having problems yet. That one is also a WD MyBook. Are there any recommendations for reliable externals in the 500GB-1TB range? I'd like to evacuate the files on these drives before they fail completely.

 

[geofelt]

Heat is the enemy of hard drives. If your external enclosures do not have active cooling, then that could be the source of your problem.

Rosewill makes some nice external enclosures, perhaps you could move the hard drives to one of those.

I use a mobile rack in a dvd drive bay for my external backups. Just put any hard drive in a caddy, and the backups go at sata speeds.

 

[meig0ittai]

I was always concerned about the cooling in those MyBooks, so I set up a standing fan to blow air across them whenever I plan to leave them on for an extended period of time. That said, I don't think moving the drives to a new enclosure will do anything about that clicking noise or the files I can no longer read.