Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this drive on April 26th. It has since died, roughly 5 weeks ago. Toshiba offered a replacement, but I'd lose my data, AND they won't extract the data for me. They don't offer such service. I have to spend a lot of money to have a basicly new drive completely dismantled to extract the informtion. Toshiba wants to send me a replacement (after I send them mine with or without data) on what is going to cost me a small fortune. The loss of the information, if it can't be recovered, is priceless to me, because this is what I used to backup family photos, videos, all iPad and iPhones etc. I couldn't possibly be more unhappy. Over 30 years in this business, and in my time I have seen some failed drives, but I have never had an external HDD die in such a short timeframe. The one time I choose to buy an external HDD for my home, and trust to put my information on it for "safe keeping", and it dies and 15+ years worth of information is currently gone, and I do not yet know how much can be recovered. Don't put your trust in this drive. P.S. This drive sat stationary since it has been connected. There has been no way of jarring, and no way for the item to fall, as it sits behind the PC on a cold floor in my den. I turned my PC monitor on and my icons wouldn't load unless I unlpugged the external drive. This was the initial start to what would eventually prove to simply be the external HDD. No drive access, and stays busy. I took the drive to the shop and hooked it to a work PC before any extensive troubleshooting. Same behavior, as well as the drive always staying busy and never allowing access. Yes, it has a drive letter and all necessary steps have been taken to determine the problem. Everyone please type in "Toshiba Basics HDD" and see how many topics automatically come up in the search engine with all of the issues people are having with this drive.