How long can you reasonably expect a hard drive to last?

I've gone through plenty of drives. I have a file sever that runs 24/7 with a raid 5 (now raid z) set-up. I've had most of the drives in it die around the time the warranty expired (three years, never buy a disk with a one year warranty). In order to increase the life of my big raid array drives I've since moved the OS to a dedicated mirror (two 500GB disks).

I did have a raptor that lasted six or seven years. It was a desktop drive however (only used when I needed it).
 
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Concerning that google study on HDDs:
They had the least HDD losses with Temps being in the mid 30s. Lower temps actually seemed to worsen the HDD lifespan.

So, don't panic just yet and run out to buy a massive fan for your HDD...
Backing up is still king... Which reminds me... BEtter go and make a backup now ;-)
 
it's quite unpredictable...I only had one drive fail on me and that one was sooooo old...
Also, I read somewhere on this forum that NOT shutting down and starting back up the drives every day actually lenghtens the life, because everytime you do that, the drive is being hit with voltage + spinning up sequence...
 
IMO, they last forever. Older stuff, like my good old 4GB WD and 10GB IBM are still working, never even needed a fan to cool them. Newer stuff needs to be cooled, but still an easy 10 year life span.
 
because everytime you do that, the drive is being hit with voltage + spinning up sequence...


pretty much so... not so much with the voltage and sudden shock of electricity current, that applies to the components on the motherboard, but more of the spooling/spinning up sequence.

It's part of the reason why I never switch my PC off. I believe its better for the components in the long run, but it's not like I'm planning on using my PC for the next 10 years, so it's really is a moot point.
 
I've heard it the other way round, too: That normal disks are not developed to run 24/7 and the bearings etc can actually suffer and thus shorten the drive's lifespan. That's why some disks are sold as constructed for 24/7 operation.
 
Hmmm. Slightly off topic, but I think my laptop hard drive just ended up dying on me, what do you guys think?

I took it to Uni, left it on Standby (always do) on the drive home and when I brought it back, it had turned itself off. When I booted it back up, came up with "Operating System Not Found" and I can't tell if the hard drive is working or not... At first I could coax it into working, but when Windows booted it eventually BSOD'd and then it wouldn't work it at all. Now it's permanetly stuck on "Operating System Not Found", it seems.

The activity indication light comes on, BIOS gives no useful information. Windows XP installation shows up as no disks being present, but I don't know whether it's my new XP CD (I had to slipstream RAID drivers w/ nLite onto a XP CD because I lost my old one, my laptop requires RAID HDD drivers) or the Hard Drives have actually died on me. Wouldn't surprised me if they have, that computer has taken an amazing amount of abuse thanks to heat and dust over the past few years...

Incase you're wondering what sort of stupid excuse for a laptop has a RAID HDD setup, it's a Clevo D900T :p Has an amazing 45 minutes of battery life...
 
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i've got 3 hdd and one dying all in 3 years time, though i have a ~20 year old 100mb drive that was still running last time i checked, a year ago.
 
Hmmm. Slightly off topic, but I think my laptop hard drive just ended up dying on me, what do you guys think?

I took it to Uni, left it on Standby (always do) on the drive home and when I brought it back, it had turned itself off. When I booted it back up, came up with "Operating System Not Found" and I can't tell if the hard drive is working or not... At first I could coax it into working, but when Windows booted it eventually BSOD'd and then it wouldn't work it at all. Now it's permanetly stuck on "Operating System Not Found", it seems.

The activity indication light comes on, BIOS gives no useful information. Windows XP installation shows up as no disks being present, but I don't know whether it's my new XP CD (I had to slipstream RAID drivers w/ nLite onto a XP CD because I lost my old one, my laptop requires RAID HDD drivers) or the Hard Drives have actually died on me. Wouldn't surprised me if they have, that computer has taken an amazing amount of abuse thanks to heat and dust over the past few years...

Incase you're wondering what sort of stupid excuse for a laptop has a RAID HDD setup, it's a Clevo D900T :p Has an amazing 45 minutes of battery life...

you might try running spin right on each of the drives by its self and then put them back in to the laptop in raid, if your trying to save the data off them that would be your best chance, more then likely the raid controller may have gone bad.
 
Hmmm. Slightly off topic, but I think my laptop hard drive just ended up dying on me, what do you guys think?

I took it to Uni, left it on Standby (always do) on the drive home and when I brought it back, it had turned itself off. When I booted it back up, came up with "Operating System Not Found" and I can't tell if the hard drive is working or not... At first I could coax it into working, but when Windows booted it eventually BSOD'd and then it wouldn't work it at all. Now it's permanetly stuck on "Operating System Not Found", it seems.

The activity indication light comes on, BIOS gives no useful information. Windows XP installation shows up as no disks being present, but I don't know whether it's my new XP CD (I had to slipstream RAID drivers w/ nLite onto a XP CD because I lost my old one, my laptop requires RAID HDD drivers) or the Hard Drives have actually died on me. Wouldn't surprised me if they have, that computer has taken an amazing amount of abuse thanks to heat and dust over the past few years...

Incase you're wondering what sort of stupid excuse for a laptop has a RAID HDD setup, it's a Clevo D900T :p Has an amazing 45 minutes of battery life...

salvage what you can with GetDataBack or SmartDataRecovery v3.9 and then delete the drive's partition and re-create it with your XP boot CD.
 
Crap, I just had my 1.5~2 year old Western Digital go out on me. No warning, either. I was just watching something I had *just* finished downloading, when in the middle of it, my computer locks up on me. Reboot, safemode screen, windows loading screen and Blue Screen: Unmountable Boot Volume or some such. So I'm running my old HDD (about 4 years old) trying to access my new one with my external adapter to no avail.


My folks have a lap top (which was once mine) and it's hard drive has lasted about 7 years now and is just now starting to show signs of it about to die.
 
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Crap, I just had my 1.5~2 year old Western Digital go out on me. No warning, either. I was just watching something I had *just* finished downloading, when in the middle of it, my computer locks up on me. Reboot, safemode screen, windows loading screen and Blue Screen: Unmountable Boot Volume or some such. So I'm running my old HDD (about 4 years old) trying to access my new one with my external adapter to no avail.


My folks have a lap top (which was once mine) and it's hard drive has lasted about 7 years now and is just now starting to show signs of it about to die.

try spin right on it, i have used it to save drives that wouldn't boot and pulled all the data off for people i have built desktops for, google spin right and its worth it. theres a money back guarantee if it doesn't work. i have had it take 2 and a half days for it to finish but it will work its hardest to read any part of the drive that won't read(ie, the boot sector, witch is the error your getting) and once the drive reads it once it moves the data away from that sector so it can boot the next time with out problem.
 
try spin right on it, i have used it to save drives that wouldn't boot and pulled all the data off for people i have built desktops for, google spin right and its worth it. theres a money back guarantee if it doesn't work. i have had it take 2 and a half days for it to finish but it will work its hardest to read any part of the drive that won't read(ie, the boot sector, witch is the error your getting) and once the drive reads it once it moves the data away from that sector so it can boot the next time with out problem.

^ Spinrite, not spin right.

Not to derail the thread, but does my current working HDD need to be of equal or greater size than the one that died to pull the data when I use Spinrite, or will it just repair the old HDD enough that I can start yanking stuff off as I can?
 
I have quite an old WD, about five years old now and it still plugs along as a secondary drive. On the other side, I had a Seagate go kaput in under a year.

Life of a HDD is hard to determine, it can vary by batch. Best thing to do is get some software that will check and monitor SMART. When things start going into the red, plan to backup ASAP and replace the drive.
 
another thing most people won't know : when you think your hard drive is dying (clicky noise or bads sectors), try to backup at once, and then LEAVE IT ALONE.

I read an article the other day that said that most of the damage to hard drives comes from people trying to save it... booting off it again and again, hoping that will change it, doing extended scans, etc.
 
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