Around a year ago my (used) laptop died. I got a new one (also used, because had no money back then) and day later my external hard drive decided to die on me. I got it fixed and all data got recovered and it worked fine.
Then April came, when my laptop broke down (graphic card died). When after months it was finally fixed, I happily plugged in my good old external drive. It worked for two days, then it kind of started to break again (broken files and stuff loaded veeeery slowly). I was scared of loosing it again, so I unplugged it, bought a new one, gave old one to get it checked. Turned out it wasn't broken at all this time. o.e But broken files stayed broken so I moved what I could to the new one yesterday. I had a backup of that broken stuff anyway, so no damage.
What happened? Turns out external hard drive needs usb 3.0 to work perfectly and while it works just fine with usb 2.0 (which is all my usb ports in my present and dead laptop) but just slower, it can actually make it work slower and slower with time and then welcome back broken files... But you just need to plug it in 3.0 and it's ok again??? xD
At this point I'm using this thread to vent about my tech problems but now I'm stressed that my new external drive will star acting up tomorrow or something and I had so many electronics dying on me this year, that I'm not mentally and financially prepared for another thing needing to be fixed... xD
(Btw, I have most important stuff backed up on two clouds and one pendrive, so I'm mostly worried about all the music and other junk I hoarded over the years.)