The title of this thread is a timely warning!! 
At the end of September, I bought a 2Tb Western Digital (WD), USB3.0, external HDD, to compliment the 1Tb WD USB2.0 external HDD that I already had, and have been using for several years.
It is to these external drives, that my backups go, created now by Acronis True Image.
Today the newest WD drive failed, after just three months of intermittent use. By intermittent, I mean it was only powered up once a week for a new back-up.
As I couldn't return it under warranty, because it contains a backup of my entire C drive, with personal documents, and saved passwords etc, I opened the case to see if there was anything obvious, e.g. an in-line fuse perhaps, as the unit was completely dead.
I checked the output from the external PSU, and that was fine, but to be sure that it remained so under load, I connected it to the other WD ext HHD, and it functioned fine.
Inside the case was a standard SATA HDD, with a 'daughter board' 'piggy-backed' onto the HDD master-board. This 'daughter board' was connected the HDD via normal power and SATA connectors.
This 'daughter board' was the USB 3.0 interface, and power regulator, which took the incoming unregulated 12V DC supply, and output a regulated 12V and 5V to the HDD.
I removed the 'daughter board', and connected the HDD to spare power and SATA connectors in the PC, and 'Bingo'. The HDD is fine, as was all the data stored on it. Proving conclusively that the problem lay with the USB 3.0/Power Regulator board.
So, what I now plan to do, is to install the now 'stand-alone' 2Tb HDD in the PC, as a second drive, so that I can back-up to this, as well as the remaining 1Tb WD EXternal drive.
It could of course have been the drive itself that failed, and not the 'daughter board', in which case the data would have been lost. Hence why I always back-up to two separate drives.
The moral of the story, as it says in the thread title, "don't put all of your eggs in one basket".
Dave
At the end of September, I bought a 2Tb Western Digital (WD), USB3.0, external HDD, to compliment the 1Tb WD USB2.0 external HDD that I already had, and have been using for several years.
It is to these external drives, that my backups go, created now by Acronis True Image.
Today the newest WD drive failed, after just three months of intermittent use. By intermittent, I mean it was only powered up once a week for a new back-up.
As I couldn't return it under warranty, because it contains a backup of my entire C drive, with personal documents, and saved passwords etc, I opened the case to see if there was anything obvious, e.g. an in-line fuse perhaps, as the unit was completely dead.
I checked the output from the external PSU, and that was fine, but to be sure that it remained so under load, I connected it to the other WD ext HHD, and it functioned fine.
Inside the case was a standard SATA HDD, with a 'daughter board' 'piggy-backed' onto the HDD master-board. This 'daughter board' was connected the HDD via normal power and SATA connectors.
This 'daughter board' was the USB 3.0 interface, and power regulator, which took the incoming unregulated 12V DC supply, and output a regulated 12V and 5V to the HDD.
I removed the 'daughter board', and connected the HDD to spare power and SATA connectors in the PC, and 'Bingo'. The HDD is fine, as was all the data stored on it. Proving conclusively that the problem lay with the USB 3.0/Power Regulator board.
So, what I now plan to do, is to install the now 'stand-alone' 2Tb HDD in the PC, as a second drive, so that I can back-up to this, as well as the remaining 1Tb WD EXternal drive.
It could of course have been the drive itself that failed, and not the 'daughter board', in which case the data would have been lost. Hence why I always back-up to two separate drives.
The moral of the story, as it says in the thread title, "don't put all of your eggs in one basket".
Dave
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