Review on 1TB Transcend StoreJet M3: Military Drop Tested USB 3.0 External Hard Drive by Colin Watkins

I've had this CD for about a year, it's only 65% full and just broken. Although the actuator is "shockproof" and covered in rubber, I've always treated it well, always shut it down properly, and here it is. None of my PCs have access to the hard drive for no apparent reason. I have about a dozen hard drives, some of which are 5 years old or older, and none of them have ever failed. This is the first time an external drive has failed so quickly. I'm very disappointed and angry at myself for not backing up my files to a second drive just in case something like this happens. I guess I just got too complacent thinking this one was just as reliable as all the others. The rest are Seagate and Toshiba hard drives. This is my first Transcend and will be my last. I'm in the process of recovering my data using Transcend's recovery software and I hope I can do it. What a pity. UPDATE: I've tried recovering data using Transcend's free software, but nothing much came of it. It took hours to return about 100 8-bit TIFF files. This is strange because all of these special images were RAW and not TIFF. Then I decided to see if Seagate had any recovery software on their website and they did. I downloaded a free trial which found ALL my files! I had to pay $100 for software to recover these files, but it's better than the $400-$800 some data recovery companies charge. So. In fact, this Transcend drive cost me twice as much and two days of headaches. I went ahead and bought a new Seagate 2TB hard drive to replace it.