How to check if my external HD is failing?

[jon08]

I have a 1-TB Western Digital MyBook Essential Edition 2.0, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, and since I've got and plan to have loads of info stored on it, I wish to run a check every now and then just to be on the safe side about it. Last thing I want is to run it someday just to find out it has died on me.

On my MBP menubar I have the SMART Reporter utility which informs me about my internal HD, and hence I'm relieved about that one, since I will be notified as soon as there's an error.

What about my external HD though? How can I go about examining that one?

 

[Erendiox]

Smart status reporters aren't of too much use, since often they don't report that the drive is failing until it's too late to get data off of it. What you can do is periodically verify your drives in Disk Utility and this can sometimes give you an idea of an impending failure. The better thing, though, is to keep a running backup of all your important data. If you think that you're going to catch a HD failure before it happens and save all your data, I think your chances are pretty slim. Backup, backup, backup.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

If you are really concerned and trust smart status you can opt for a eSATA enclosure and eSATA expresscard, since smart status cannot be monitored over USB and FW , but that'll be voiding the warranty on your mybook.