Western Digital My Book Fails Right On Schedule

Silly me, and here I was actually relying on my Western Digital My Book external hard drive. From what I've just read these failures are not uncommon but the failures seem to occur across brands so it's not like switching to another company will necessarily do any good. How to proceed? Buy another one, just did, and replace it on a regular basis, I guess. Piss poor solution, maybe some research will uncover a better one. I know there are online backup solutions. In the meantime here's a link to a great customer review from a gent on Amazon. It says, in part;

"As with the earlier model, no internal fan is apparent and heat dissipation is absolutely critical to the longevity of any hard drive. Some manufacturers have skimped on this, such as Seagate with their FreeAgent series which has had a high failure rate, but v1.0 Western Digital My Book drives have also historically not fared well either. Consumers want these devices to be nearly silent, and the tradeoff is product design that omits what is often the single most important component to guarantee a longer drive life - a cooling fan.


Although both series of drives seemed to get equally warm to the touch (but not uncomfortably hot), the single most important concern I have about Western Digital's entire My Book product line is drive longevity and data integrity. The last version of this product had scores of complaints about drive failures, almost always resulting in partial or total loss of your data. Most seemed to either fail during the first week of use or right around the first anniversary of purchase."

Amazon.com: Phillip M. Dampier's review of Western Digital 500 GB My Book Essential 2...