Are external hard disks reliable? I have a Seagate 500 GB external USB hard drive. One day it just stopped working. Maybe it had suffered a few knocks on my daily commute I reckoned. Then I bought a 320 GB WD external hard disk a year ago. This one stayed at home. I just used it for backup of my documents and music and some photographs. It never left my desk. When it filled up I kept it aside and it was there for about 4 or 5 months. Yesterday I tried to retrieve my old documents from the hard disk and I get the message that I need to format the disk in order to use it. What the heck is that.....if I format it all my documents will get wiped out. I tried using other cables etc but the result is the same. I can feel the disk rotating but nothing else...now what the heck should I do?
