Longevity of External Hard Drives

[saturninus]

Hi, I have a Maxtor 300 GB 7200 rpm external hard drive. I was wondering, what is the average longevity concerning most external hard drives like mine? Mine is the kind that comes in an enclosure and uses AC power.

[Kov-Ice]

I dunno if there's a real answer there, but I believe the drive within the enclosure is the same as any other drive you might purchase. My guess is that there's not much difference.

[glc]

The IDE to SATA bridge circuit goes out more often than the drive itself, so I'd say the odds of it failing are a lot higher than with a bare drive installed internally.

[saturninus]

Okay.

To clear up confusion I purchased the Maxtor 300 GB External hard drive and not a hard drive and enclosure seperately.

[nubbler]

Right. But it hooks up to your computer via USB, right? That means you have a USB to SATA (or whichever) bridge as part of your enclosure because the hard drive inside is usually just a regular maxtor internal hard drive that you would buy for internal use. Therefore I would expect the hard drive to have same life expectancy as a internal one since it is basically the same thing, however it depends on how cool it runs in the enclosure i suppose.
But the bridge might fail. If that happens and your drive is no longer covered by warranty you could remove it from the enclosure and connect it inside your computer.

I don't know any concrete numbers but I would expect it to be similar to a Maxtor internal drive.

[glc]

This is why I buy separate drives and enclosures - getting the drive out of the enclosure is easier and you don't void any warranties by opening it.