WD Smart Book corrupted files

[designer71]

I've had my WD 1TB Smart Book external hard drive for a year now.  Ever since July, some of my files randomly show up as "corrupted" when I try to open them.  This has happened in Excel, Word, and now InDesign CS4.  For the word document, I followed the steps to "open and repair" but it didn't work.  Just the other night, I adjusted two spreads in InDesign and the very next morning they were corrupted.  I downloaded TuneUp360 to "clean the registry" but that didn't work either.  I was told that when I unplug the device and then travel with it, something has jiggled loose inside and so the files are now misaligned upon opening attempts. This means I can never retrieve what's corrupted and am now at risk of corrupting anything else I attempt to open.  I am wondering why the heck I bought this thing!!  Any other plausible suggestions of things I can try aside from taking a sledge hammer to it?

[Joe_S]

Did you try the obvious running defrag and checkdisk virus and malware scans? They are delicate. People have corrupted them just tipping them from the standing position onto their side on a desktop and damaged them.

Joe