I have a 150 GB Western Digital External USB Hard Drive. Recently ( over the past few days), Windows has been giving me errors while the drive is being scanned by AVG or Spybot. My first thought was corrupted sectors on the drive, so I did a scan of the drive looking for those errors and none came up. I tried to defragment the drive, but it stopped about a quarter through and then windows gave an error saying the device was no longer recognized. I unplugged it and let it set for awhile and plugged it back in. It started up and I started copying my files off it, but it kept giving me the same error. I kept trying though and now I've had it connected for about a half hour without any errors. I've already transferred all of my critical data to my internal hard drive (I'm not taking any chances).

I've not been hearing any clicking sounds or anything like that from the drive. My only other thought is that it might be the controller card on the hard drive itself (hopefully not) or the USB controller might be going out on it (if that's the case, I can just take the drive out of the case and put it in my desktop). Has anyone had any experience with something like this?

It's not uncommon for the controller in the case to go bad. If you're willing, crack it open, take the drive out, and stick it in your PC. See if you have any errors that way.

A week ago one of my computer's internal HDs caught fire shortly after I turned the computer on. That was fell, with the toxic smelling smoke and everything. If you are going to break a HD, I suggest something more traditional than fire, no matter how much Massassi endorses the "kill it with fire" sentiment.

Luckily I didn't really lose anything I can't replace, and it was 35 months old, with 36 months warranty.

Harddrives can catch fire? I never heard that before.

Interesting.