If the board goes bad, there's the replacement of it... And yes you can take the board off without opening the drive up. Unfortunately you need an exact replacement, so if you happen to have 2 of the exact same hard drive then you could swap boards to make one work again when it stops. Just hope they don't both stop working at once.

Oh yes, and of course having to run the occasional scandisk/chkdsk/utilities on it. Etc. (Especially when the power goes out an caching or something goes wrong)/

Not every drive starts as a backup drive. Besides with file updates you sometimes add files and delete older ones. Files do eventually get fragmented, but maybe not nearly as much as we'd see in the old days where you ran defrag every month or so.
While burned discs aren't...

Honestly if you're making regular say weekly backups, you should probably be burning no more than 1-2 DVD's per week, which you could even mail to a friend's place rather than drive there.

Might be better off using a tape instead if you had a HUGE amount of data to backup at a time, or maybe use tapes for the base and then use discs for the incremental backups. After 3 months start over again...

Oh and don't reuse the same disk (floppy or rewritable) for all the disks...

Since we're on the topic...

I'm reminded of a laptop i had years and years ago with a 300Mb drive, it had utilities that told the hard drive to park the head right before you turned off the computer so you could move the computer...I haven't seen any utilities like that since.

I can only think that in modern hard drives when it realizes it has very little power left that it tells the head to lock somewhere safely until power is restored, since the head would be the easiest thing to damage the plates and your data.

Windows has a "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" resident utility, which one is supposed to use before disconnecting an external HD, USB flash drive, etc.. This gives the external accessory a "power-off notification" to allow it to prepare for the upcoming loss of power.

Thanks for the useful tips, info and details. They're really helpful. +1 for all replies. Cheers! :)

I think that's more so it makes sure to flush the cache; Although windows recently has defaulted that usb drives are automatically set up not to cache results in memory too much since so many people can't seem to know how to properly eject their devices...

I've tried Seagate, WD, GoFlex and HGST.

WD I find is the most reliable right now, with my Goflex being my other goto drives. No Seagates for me. Ever. And no Touros, ever again. Both the Seagate and Touros died very quickly after first purchase, and not because of abuse. Tried to repair them.. nope, non-standard parts as well. Yay.

But yes, don't touch the drive when it is on, even if it says "portable". They're not. They like to say they are, but push come to shove, they really, really aren't. They're "portable" in the sense that they are small, not "portable" in the sense you can use them anywhere.

At least in my experience. Others may have been luckier/unluckier. I've got files going back to the early 2000s but it has been a constant trial and error with external HDs.

Doing it a long time doesnt make it better. Yeah the backups out of house are not up to date, so? They are just for absolute emergencies like fires and break ins. Stuff that is way less likely btw than falling over while carrying around a portable (=2.5" which do not need an extra power source, not because you are supposed to keep em in the handbag)
Yes we see things differently, that is why we are discussing them^^

Never did any of this, don't see a reason to on a backup drive. No idea why you are so fixated on the board, if the thing breaks I get a new one.That is why you are supposed to make multiple backups.

On a backup drive it is a non issue.

Ok mrkgnao, better carry 50-200 DVDs with you wherever you go ^^

Why do complicated, just use 3 HDs and park 1 or 2 of them at different places. Weekly backups only for the important personal files which can never be replaced.

1. Seagate Backup Plus Desktop
2. Seagate Backup Plus Slim
3. Seagate Backup Plus Fast
4. WD My Passport Slim
5. WD My Passport Ultra
Top five external hard drives: https://www.cnet.com/news/top-external-storage-devices-backing-up-is-a-personal-matter/
There are many wonderful hard disk repair software tools that you can use to diagnose and fix hard drive issues.
More info: https://www.cleverfiles.com/help/hard-drive-repair-software.html

I'm a big "Necroing is just a term gamers came up with so that they can complain and look special while typing with one hand" but even I think that's a waste of effort.