Joe,

I would visit the WD web site, download their Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for 
Windows, and run it to see whether there are any obvious problems with your 
external drive.  If the drive comes up clean, you might consider using the 
write zeros to the drive option, instead of just reformatting it.  I don't 
know if this drive comes with any software that you were using.  If it does, 
you'll need to download and reinstall it to the drive, after wiping it and 
reformatting.

Of course, if the drive isn't physically damaged, the question remains of 
why your files were corrupted.  I'm afraid I can't come up with anything 
off-hand, based on what you've provided.

Hope this is helpful.

John Sproule

--------------- Original Message Below -------------

Date:    Thu, 13 May 2010 12:30:14 -0400
From:    Joe Trimarchi <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Cyclical Redundancy Check Errors external hard drive

I have an external WD MyBook 500 GB drive connected to my Dell desktop via 
USB 2. I've been using it as a backup for my pictures. Yesterday I noticed 
SyncToy reported some CRC errors and sure enough I couldn't open those 
files. I ran chkdsk and it added 541 clusters to the bad clusters file. It 
corrected errors and shows a total of 2164 KB in bad sectors. Obviously some 
files were lost and I've now copied everything off the drive back to my 
Desktop.

My questions are, should I replace the drive? It is only about 1 1/2 years 
old and I only paid about $90 for it at Costco. Or should I reformat it or 
just leave it the way chkdsk left it? I'm seriously thinking of replacing it 
with 2 external drives keeping duplicate backups. 

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