Life expectancy of a hard drive?

Quiet Earth · « **on:** 2 Nov 2009, 03:27 am »

What is the average life expectancy of a 500GB (or greater) hard drive that is used to stream music for 8 hours every day?

bregez · « **Reply #1 on:** 2 Nov 2009, 04:22 am »

Life expectancy is a function of many things including spindle speed, outgassing of internal plastics, heat cycling, etc?
If you are running your drives for 8 hours a day I would recommend configuring your computer to optimize airflow over the drive to keep it cool. The newer 10,000 and 15,000 rpm drives run at elevated temperatures. Some even recommend running the drives with the pcb face up. I am not sure how that helps

FullRangeMan · « **Reply #2 on:** 2 Nov 2009, 04:26 am »

Good question, I also want to know it. In the 90years a mainframe a IBM Ramac storage cluster was a one failure expectancy for 125 years range, but it have a very hi price at that time.

srb · « **Reply #3 on:** 2 Nov 2009, 04:32 am »

Most 7200 rpm hard drives are rated at 1.2 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). If the computer is only on for 8 hours per day, that would equate to 410 years!

Those figures are under optimal conditions of temperature, vibration, supply voltage etc. Turning them on and off will also decrease that number as well. But it is a statistical average and a percentage will prematurely fail.

I have had hard drives in operation for 10 years before they were retired because their capacity was too small. I have also had hard drives fail within a few months and others fail after 2 years, 5 years, etc.

So it's hard to say how long your particular drive will last. Most modern hard drives have S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) onboard the drive which can report impending failure. I have received those errors on several occasions and replaced the drive immediately.

Scheduling a regular Error Checking routine (Scandisk) is a good idea, as it can report failed sectors, etc.

I make regular (daily) backups and don't worry about it.

Steve

Quiet Earth · « **Reply #4 on:** 2 Nov 2009, 05:21 am »

I forgot to mention "external" hard drive. I don't know if that matters or not. And yes, the unit would be placed with respect to proper heat dissipation and reasonable vibration control.

1.2 million hours mtbf, whoa! I didn't know that a manufacturer would be brave enough to quote a mtbf that high. I guess it doesn't mean too much though because :

Quote from: srb on 2 Nov 2009, 04:32 am

I have also had hard drives fail within a few months and others fail after 2 years, 5 years, etc.
Steve

I guess that's what I'm really wondering. What are your personal experiences with actual hard drive life? For example, if you feel like you need to back it up every day, then maybe you don't feel confident that it will last very long because of a previous experience.

Me? I haven't got a clue. I haven't had one fail before I upgraded to a better one. That's all I know right now.

satfrat · « **Reply #5 on:** 2 Nov 2009, 05:35 am »

I would think an external HD has a better chance of not failing cuz chances are the working envirement is much better outside of a computer than inside. It gets mighty hot inside most computers so if your exterior HD case has a fan, that alone should help it's longitivity. That's my thought anyways.

Cheers,
Robin

srb · « **Reply #6 on:** 2 Nov 2009, 05:37 am »

It's not a lack of confidence, but it is like buying insurance. You hope you never have to use it. The chances are that it won't fail before I replace it due to lack of capacity. But I have replaced drives for some friends whose drives have failed. And I have replaced drives at work, both in servers and a handful of drives among 150 workstations.

My backup is an automatically scheduled incremental type, so I am only writing data which has changed. That way if I ever do have to restore it, I've got most everything back, perhaps minus a few hours of work at most.

Steve

satfrat · « **Reply #7 on:** 2 Nov 2009, 05:46 am »

Quote from: srb on 2 Nov 2009, 05:37 am

It's not a lack of confidence, but it is like buying insurance. You hope you never have to use it. The chances are that it won't fail before I replace it due to lack of capacity. But I have replaced drives for some friends whose drives have failed. And I have replaced drives at work, both in servers and a handful of drives among 150 workstations.

My backup is an automatically scheduled incremental type, so I am only writing data which has changed. That way if I ever do have to restore it, I've got most everything back, perhaps minus a few hours of work at most.

Steve

I fully agree, I have 3 external HD's for the sole purpose of protecting both my computer's internal HD and my internal audio library HD. Not backing up hard drives is like playing Russian Roulette.

Cheers,
Robin