USB harddisks: reliable?

[Colin Brace]

Hi all,

I had a USB drive go offline this morning with a bunch of these errors
in the kernel log:

[...]
localhost kernel:     Additional sense: Logical unit not ready, cause
not reportable
localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 12375
[...]

After trying in vain to umount/remount the disk in terminal, I ended
up powering the disk down and then turning it back on again. It was
automatically remounted without problem and *appears* normal (I have
yet to run fsck on it).

This and some weirdness I was having with another USB drive earlier
this fall have me wondering whether this interface is really robust
enough for continual use. (I have used up the four internal SATA
interfaces in my box which is why I am using an USB drive.)

Thoughts anyone?

-- 
  Colin Brace
  Amsterdam