My 6TB hard drive failed, any ideas?

I bought one today... This will mean I have 4 copies of my music library once it is formatted. One is stored offsite...
As others have mentioned, it would be catastrophic to lose my music library at this point...
Thanks for the information about the unit at Best Buy.

 

WD Red or HGST. Everything will cost more in the long run.

 

And for a hundred bucks, replace it.

 

Why when there may be nothing wrong with the drive? And, not everyone just has $100 lying around.

 

Can I ask what does "acting flaky" mean in this context? I was listening to music the other night through my Raspberry Pi/ Squeezebox/ external HDD set up, and after one track ended, and the next one started all I got was white noise instead of Simply Red. Other songs played fine afterward, but this had happened a couple of times lately. Time to replace?

 

Hard to say for sure but always error on the side of caution. Do you have another drive to see if it does the same thing. I would get a backup drive copy everything and reformat the one that may be going bad copy everything back and see if it works. Either way you will have a backup.

 

Run a utility that can check the SMART status of the drive. The SMART status can sometimes indicate if a drive is going bad or having problems.

Some of the drive manufacturers have utilities that can check the SMART status of their drives. If you have a Western Digital check the WD support site for utilities. If you have a Toshiba check the Toshiba site. There are also other drive utilities that can check the SMART status and also run tests on a drive.

There are also other reasons that could cause problems like you experienced. Like the computer or drive going into a sleep or power saving mode while playing a long track, bad tags that cause the playback software to get confused, buffers being configured too short, interrupt latency problems caused by greedy drivers, etc. Strange behavior doesn't automatically mean your drive is failing.

 

I use Backblaze and have been very happy. Had a drive go down last year and they mailed me a new one to copy and mail back at no charge!

 

That sounds like a corrupt file. But, it's hard to tell how it became corrupt. The file header may be damaged.

When my HDD drives go bad, they start dropping data, files suddenly go missing, you get random freezes, and programs crash.

It's best to run a SMART test. That will give you clues on if a drive is going bad. If you hear clicking, back that drive up immediately! By then, it's no longer a matter of if, bhut when it's going to die.

If an SSD goes bad, i'm told that it will just up and die dead. No getting your data off of it. The good news is that there is less of a chance an SSD will die for at least a decade, provided it is maintained properly by provisioning, using the TRIM command, and leaving adequate blank space. Do not defrag an SSD.

On all types of drives, it's best to leave at least 15% blank. Never fill it up all the way. You will surely lose data that way, and it will malfunction.

 

Now down to $129.99

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-eas...-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401

 

That's a nice price and should be a wonderful drive.

I'm tempted, as one of my computers is a i5 - a low profile with no room for addition internal storage - so this would give me tons of breathing room on that machine.

 

Sounds like the file is corrupted, but in no way indicative of a failing drive. If you want to know the status of your drive, download an app from the drive maker which will run a S.M.A.R.T. test. That will tell you if your drive is bad.