[strikermed]

I bought a 320 gig western digital My Book Home Edition about 3 years ago. I use it to hold all my media, and I use it extensively for video editing and graphics ect. I actually am about to graduate college and my final projects were all done on this drive (backed up luckily) but I was wondering why after all the use, and long hours that it is just now starting to fail me. Here are its symptoms. When unplugged and not running for a while the drive will boot up and register normally. When I start to use it/it is plugged in for a while and registered via USB or Firewire unused it will fail to respond and eventually it will either not register on windows anymore or just freeze. I have been able to transfer files over to my other drive. What I"m wondering is, is it just over heating or is it the power supply over heating and failing when it heats up? Right now I disassembled the drive taking it out of the case. It worked well for about 10 min, then it started with similar symptoms. I am considering placing the drive in my tower and running it from there. Is this the final test to see if it is bad or is there another way?

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Update on the drive... I installed it in my tower with SATA, and power. It powered up and it transfered at 2X the rate of it being in the enclosure, BUT it had the same symptoms. It worked for a little while and it then stop responding and this time I had to do a hard shut down due to my entire computer not responding. SO I conclude it is the drive, but what is the reason for this behavior? Why is it working for a little while then stop.

[strikermed]

Update on the drive... I installed it in my tower with SATA, and power. It powered up and it transfered at 2X the rate of it being in the enclosure, BUT it had the same symptoms. It worked for a little while and it then stop responding and this time I had to do a hard shut down due to my entire computer not responding. SO I conclude it is the drive, but what is the reason for this behavior? Why is it working for a little while then stop.

[123Runner]

Have you tried running chkdsk /r on the drive?
Have you run the drive manufacturers diagnostics on the drive? (link in my signature)
Have you defragged the drive recently?

123runner

[strikermed]

Thanks, I'll run those tests and get back to you... I am currently running the manufacturer diagnostic (extended test), I'll run the chckdsk next, and then defrag if every test passes in that order. I'll let you know the results