I don't think you can physically fit a 3.5" HDD into a 2.5" enclosure. But if the PCB and the SATA interface of the 2.5" enclosure is removable, you might be able to hook the naked PCB and HDD up to your system.

And just to cover all our bases, a 2.5" HDD into a 3.5" enclosure is plausible.

It'll probably get damaged sooner or later. What is your PSU's specifications and how old is it? Did you install any new hardware, like a GPU, recently? It may be a symptom of insufficient power supply. You might even want to try to use another power connector to the HDD, in case the current connector is bad or something.

This post has been edited by everling: May 29 2011, 11:03 AM

Yes.

You prefer 2.5" or 3.5"? Budget? Capacity?

While there is a possibility that a clean format might help, there are a few other things that you might want to try out first.

1. Check your HDD's data and power cables. Like use another set of data and power cables.
2. Test your RAM with memtest86.
3. Try to test if your PSU is unable to provide the power required. Either use a PSU calculator to estimate roughly if your PSU can still support or tests like unplugging your DVD drive and other unnecessary power consuming devices and see if your system is stable afterwards.

If all those checks out fine, then a clean install might help.

Sounds like your HDD was physically fine. Unless your HDD was encrypted, it should have been very possible to retrieve your data with the help of another computer or laptop.

It has been like that since the early days of BitTorrent.

If it has happened only once so far, it is likely to be mere chance. If it happens a second time, unless you have reason to suspect something is going on, it is still likely to be chance. If it happens for a third time, there is a slightly larger chance it is because of something.

HDD have a large variety of causes for physical failure, most of which are beyond our control. Google has produced a white paper on HDD reliability, indicating that most HDDs in their server farms fail without warning.

The thing that most of us can do is to backup our precious data and hope that we are given warning signs and that we can recognise it in time.

This post has been edited by everling: Jun 18 2011, 11:49 PM

Higher RPM is noticeably better. Larger cache is less noticeably better.

For HDDs, you should prioritise reliability and cost. Performance HDDs are cost-ineffective. SSDs are clearly superior to the fastest performance HDDs.

Last I checked, Samsung's F3 HDDs are pretty good on cost, performance and reliability. You might want to research them and compare against WD.

WD Blue would be better than WD Green in performance. But if you don't have a pressing need to upgrade, the WD Green will be okay.

If your WD Green is a WD10EARS model or newer and you're using Windows XP, you may want to research into 4k alignment, as that will improve performance.

They're all intended for 24/7 operation, as that is what a significantly large proportion of users will use their HDDs for. At this time, there are no known wide-scale manufacturing defect in any HDDs, so we don't have anything to recommend to avoid. It is likely to be just bad luck.

The Samsung F4 are out, but I'm not sure where to find them. The price lists are rather bare on such details.

I have two WD10EADS and I don't have a performance problem with either. My OS is on a Samsung F3.

I treat my WD10EADS the same as any other HDD. I even used to have my OS on the WD10EADS before I bought my F3. Migrating the OS from the WD10EADS to the F3 did not give me noticeable performance improvements. Migrating to an SSD gave me noticeable performance difference.

As for 24/7 operation, I have ran my HDDs for over a week straight. Didn't have a performance problem with my WD10EADS then nor any now.

It wasn't a problem free experience. My first WD10EADS encountered some damage, so I bought my second WD10EADS to transfer the data to and then RMA the first. Both the second HDD and the replacement HDD has worked without issue since then.

Well, that would be natural. And the way you were asking your questions had me thinking you don't really do 24/7 a lot.

24/7 for three years is a very good record.

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Added on June 28, 2011, 2:24 pmBut didn't you said that your WD10EADS is only a year old?

This post has been edited by everling: Jun 28 2011, 02:24 PM

I used to think that having 1TB of data on a single HDD is risky.

I'm also thinking of getting a 2TB myself this weekend, but haven't done my homework yet.

It should be able to do so. But it seems that RAID have their own synchronising problems, even with RAID-1, that can lead to a lost array anyway.

Sorry. More like in the event the first HDD fails, there is a slim chance of corrupted data on the second HDD, which might lead to the OS not booting properly or some such. It should usually work as advertised, but there are a number of horror stories about RAID.

Came across a firmware update for the HD204UI. Those planning to buy might want to read the following first.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmont...ngF4EGBadBlocks
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd..._bbs_msg_id=386

It seems to be a relatively minor problem however. Although if the bug is triggered and "bad blocks" are reported, it is a software problem and not an actual hardware problem.

I think it was Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit and above that will automatically align the partitions for you, so you don't need to worry about that.

It's not absolutely necessary. Today's green HDDs does outperform older 7200RPM HDDs, thanks to higher platter densities. Storing your OS on one would be okay, while perhaps a little slower than today's 7200RPM HDDs. It is a valid option if you're not fond of the idea of spending a lot on your computer and you find the performance acceptable.

Check your Event Viewer. It will be logged there. Try checking every entry from the applicable time range, there shouldn't be too many entries.

Where did you read that the WD20EARX is a 7200RPM HDD? By all rights, it should be a 5400RPM drive or be bumped up to either a Blue or Black series.

99% chance false data.

WD specifically marketed their green drives as variable RPM. Empirical testing on the WD10EADS using two different methodologies, one of them is noise analysis, reveal that instead of variable RPM, it was actually at a static 5400RPM.

I haven't been able to locate a WD20EARX performance benchmark, but I expect that it will perform the same as the WD20EARS. As for the HD204UI, although it has the same platter count, platter density and RPM, the one benchmark I have come across shows a significantly higher performance than the WD20EARS. I'm sceptical however, but bought a HD204UI nonetheless. It's an okay HDD.

edit: Fixed model no typo.

This post has been edited by everling: Jul 6 2011, 08:52 PM

For your next rig, I recommend you spend some time on quieter hardware. You might enjoy the experience.

+1