Beware Western Digital Green hard drives!

[Jubal]

If you have one of these drives, I recommend that you back it up immediately or put it on a cloud. We have had two die in the last month. Unfortunately, most of my hi-rez music files were on this drive including at least about 30+ HD Tracks albums. Fortunately, I keep most of my files on a quality Antec independent drive that stays off until I need access to them. I also have a back up drive for this one.
My wife's drive died last month and the recovery cost was very significant. She has since read stories that the green drives were dropped by Western Digital due to significant failure rates.
This is by no means intended to be a major criticism of WD. I have had much better success with them than other brands.

In general, it is a good idea to do backups, especially if you haven't in a long time.

I do plan on contacting HD Tracks to see if there is any way they will allow me re-download all of the files I have purchased from them.

[Plasmatopia]

I do plan on contacting HD Tracks to see if there is any way they will allow me re-download all of the files I have purchased from them.

That was my first thought. Hopefully they will do that!

[Rune Blackwings]

i have a mybook by WD....are they affected?

[Zeuhlmate]

Most companies have 3 identical HD's of everything important.

[Jerjo]

Hard drives, man I love 'em and hate 'em. I've had issues with WD more than Seagate but the later isn't perfect either. Asking anything to spin up on a regular basis and sooner or later, it's going to fail. One of these days I need to get three new ones and one will go into the safety deposit box.

[markwoll]

As I recall, the greens were very inexpensive. You get what you pay for.
They are more reliable than some I have dealt with ( IBM deathstar, Samsung HDD )
I generally dupe and replace a drive after a couple of years no matter what the usage. They are cheap compared to the loss of data.
The WD Red drives for NAS use or the WD Purple for surveillance are a bit more expensive, but are designed to be run for long periods.
The blue have replaced green.

[Jubal]

The greens were designed to start and stop more frequently than others to save power usage. The argument here is pretty similar to cars. Cars with primarily highway mileage tend to last longer than those subject to constant stop and go traffic.
I have a blue and a black, both 1TB, in heavy duty Antec independent drive cases. They stay off unless I am using them for music access only.