Will copying 300 GB from one hard drive to another kill it?

[superboyac]

I am about to synchronize my files from one hard drive to another (and repeat it for a 3rd drive).  Now, the last time I did this (about 2 weeks ago), just a few hours after everything was copied, the hard drive died.  I have since returned it and received the warranty replacement from Seagate.  I am about to start synchronizing again, but I don't want to do it if it is too taxing on the hard drive.  Shouldn't drives be able to handle this?  I don't think I'm doing anything the drive wasn't designed for.

I realize I am transferring a lot of stuff.  It takes about 3-4 hours.  Maybe the heat sustained for that long damages the drive.  The problem is, what else do I do?  Do I have to transfer it more slowly?  Should I transfer a few gigabytes, take a break, and then transfer again?  Seems kind of silly to me. 

If any of you hard drive gurus know about this, please let me know.

[Josh]

This will not do damage to the drive, or it shouldnt if the drive was manufacturer in any decent fabrication facility. I wouldnt worry about it honestly. It would be like doing a full format on the drive.

[superboyac]

This will not do damage to the drive, or it shouldnt if the drive was manufacturer in any decent fabrication facility. I wouldnt worry about it honestly. It would be like doing a full format on the drive.

OK, thanks.  I won't worry about it then.  I should be safe anyway, since my data is backed up (crosses fingers).

[cthorpe]

I've done similar many times.  Everything should be fine.  I would guess that the earlier failure was a fluke.

[Nighted]

Keep that hard drive cool. Make sure you have adequate cooling in your machine.

[gjehle]

Keep that hard drive cool. Make sure you have adequate cooling in your machine.

i can only second that.

the only thing i could think off that might have caused extra stress to your drive was that your data was very fragmented and your IO scheduler was doing a not so decent job ;-)
that might cause more vibrations over a prolonged time which could loosen up accumulated dust which in return would cause scratches all over your disk.

this is also _the_ reason to get a new laptop harddrive after you dropped your laptop ;-)
it's not so much the fall and sudden stop that damages the (switched off) laptop, but the dust that gets loose inside the disk.

[superboyac]

True.  I try keeping my hard drives as cool as possible.  It's an old computer, and when I first built it, I didn't give cooling that much attention, so there are certain things I'm physically limited to in the case.  The next computer I build will have a much greater emphasis on cooling.  So far, it's handles itself pretty well.  But I've had two hard drives crash in it over the years, so who knows what that was due to.  Well, one of them was those IBM DeathStars, and the other just happed recently.

PS, I just transferred my data last night, and it seemed to go without a problem.  Thanks.