My western digital 500GB external drive (ad byline put your life on it) that just gave up after only 2 months taking with it some important backups from recent work. This drive didn't fail in any obvious way, no noise, no problem putting data onto it in fact I only noticed the first time I tried to get something off it. I'm still very slowly assessing he damage - the only way to know for sure is to try and get them off the disk, if I can they're OK if not ...well. After running diagnostics I discovered the disk had failed the reallocated sector count test. Needless to say if you're thinking of buying this drive don't. I've written a review for Pixmania where I bought the drive but so far they have not published it - I've written to them asking them why and will keep you informed on whether their user reviews are phony PR or not.