My Passport 2 TB overheating?

I bought a My Passport 2 TB about three months ago, and so far i have loved it. My usage involves a lot of continuous usage as i store a lot of video files on it that i generally watch right off the drive a lot. Since i keep going back to it sometimes i just leave it connected all the time.

I haven’t noticed any problems with it till today, when anything i tried to watch off the drive wouldn’t play smoothly and it would stutter a lot (using VLC, connected to USB 3.0 on my MacBook Pro). First i thought it was just the video quality but then when I disconnected it i felt the drive might have been overheating, as i’ve never felt it getting that hot in my usage these past few months.

My friends tell me its bad practice to continuously use external drives for prolonged periods and i started to believe i might have slightly damaged it by leaving it powered on for slightly prolonged periods of time. But then i found this thread on the WD forums where a staff member stated that it should be fine: 

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-Portable-Drives/Is-it-OK-to-use-USB-hard-disk-continuously-connected-to-TV-or/td-p/592521

I was able to copy the same files that were stuttering when i tried to play them directly, onto my internal hard drive just fine and they play back perfectly from there. So i’m now not sure if this was just a one off case where i left it plugged it in way too long (almost about 21 hours), or that my drive is faulty. Is this normal behaviour, and is it detrimental to the hard drive to use it extensively?

And i do not use this drive as a backup device for my Mac.

Hi MasqueradeThief, the time that you leave the Passport connected should have no effect, since it will go into sleep mode when is not being used. Be sure to connect the Passport directly to the computer, since longer cables might cause power inconsistencies. 

 my passport is overheatng. it is the wd20nmvw type, it was working fine, then began to over heat. tried it on diferent pc’s, and will not show up, only on a laptop with windows 8.1 an ONLY on a 3.0 usb…things show up after a long wait. then if i attempt to transfer data over, it LITEREALY takes hours to just move like 5 megs…i have changed out cables, and it still a no go. how can i get this replaced? it is the 2 T My Passport