[Kn1nJa]

The biggest thing to remember with external hard drives is to make sure they are "safely removed" before unplugging the data or power cables.

One time I was backing up my laptop (over 5GB worth of data) and I accidenally hit the power strip switch in the middle of the backup. The drive went CLUNK and was rendered essentially useless. The only silver lining to this was the fact that I had an extended warranty which allowed me to get another drive.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with "safely remove", it is a little icon down near the clock on your computer that looks like a drive with a green arrow. When you are done using a drive, you need to click the icon and then click the drive that you want to remove. This ensures that the drive is not in the process of writing anything so that you can avoid unplugging it in the middle of it doing something. If it gives you an error that it cannot be ejected, close all windows that may be related to the drive and try again. Not safely removing a drive is the #1 cause of flash drive failures in my experience.

Also, since I probably forgot earlier, thanks a bunch for the post morts! It got me thinking again about data security and safety.....something I should always be conscious of.