External Hard Drive
 

My Seagate 500MB external hard-drive has started making a humming noise.

Should I be concerned?

Don't know. I had a Seagate drive which started to click then a couple of days later died completely.

If you've got stuff on there that you haven't got backed up else where ... then nows the time to back it up ... just in case

Agree with gidders. At least have one back-up. I like to have three, and one of those drives is in a different location to the others.....ie in a different property. I have had a drive go down before and lost everything, not a nice feeling.

I have to get another drive for my back-ups, I worry about losing my stuff. I use a Hitachi 1TB drive, and you can get them so cheap now. I saw the same as mine for £42 the other day...place in manchester called micro direct (look them up on t'interwebs). May be able to get cheaper, though. Worth a look...I will be sorting one in a day or so when I get paid. ;)

External hard drives are terrible on the whole. The best medium for saving is discs which seems backwards but its true. External hard drives are poorly made and prone to over heating, knocks and system failures. My advice is to have as many storage areas as possible. I have worked in IT for a long time and i can tell you that these are the bain of our lives. We tell people and they never listen and then come moaning when they lose all data!

If it makes noise that means there might be a problem with the hardware. Keep a backup as soon as possible and try to format it and see what happens.

It's been 4 years I am using one 750GB from Transcend. Never seen any problem but I always keep a backup just incase. I don't really think you can find a mechanic who fixes portable hard drive. So try to buy a new once and transfer your files ASAP.

I've never had an issue with any of my external drives, but I've had three different Seagate internal drives fail all between 13 months & 24 months from new. I've since learnt to avoid Seagate!

BTW buccaneer - are you sure you didn't meant 500GB drive? I doubt Seagate have made any under 1GB in the last 10 years. 500MB is easy to back up to a small SD card :)