Do HDDs fail over time?

[pk2708]

So I have a really old PC (like 2012 or so ). It has core i7 2600K, GTX 680 and 8GB Ram. Now I has closed this PC for over a year and was using a newer one but I decided to use the old one for some emulation gaming and old games in my living room. I decided to format the PC and I chose the clean it completely option. Now, my system is running slow af. Basic tasks are taking extreme amounts of time to load. Once they load it is fine. I was able to play RocketLeague 1080P with everything at high at 60 FPS no problem and GTA V also ran fine. However what I noticed was it was taking an obscene amount of time to download things despite the fact that I use a 1Gbps connection and my main PC downloads these things in an instant. And so I looked at the downloading progress in steam and the results were pretty weird. 

On one hand it works fast sometimes and really progresses to like 500MB instantly and then again slows to a crawl and sometimes stops for a while. 

I was looking across forums and someone suggested someone to use CrystamDiskInfo and I did and it is showing this.

 

 

Caution shows : 208 bad sectors

[Sakkura]

Yes, hard drives do fail over time; they're mechanical devices, so you have bearings that wear out etc.

[boey]

4 minutes ago, pk2708 said:

So I have a really old PC (like 2012 or so ). It has core i7 2600K, GTX 680 and 8GB Ram. Now I has closed this PC for over a year and was using a newer one but I decided to use the old one for some emulation gaming and old games in my living room. I decided to format the PC and I chose the clean it completely option. Now, my system is running slow af. Basic tasks are taking extreme amounts of time to load. Once they load it is fine. I was able to play RocketLeague 1080P with everything at high at 60 FPS no problem and GTA V also ran fine. However what I noticed was it was taking an obscene amount of time to download things despite the fact that I use a 1Gbps connection and my main PC downloads these things in an instant. And so I looked at the downloading progress in steam and the results were pretty weird. 

On one hand it works fast sometimes and really progresses to like 500MB instantly and then again slows to a crawl and sometimes stops for a while. 

I was looking across forums and someone suggested someone to use CrystamDiskInfo and I did and it is showing this.

 

 

Caution shows : 208 bad sectors

anything with moving parts die over time

[MadmanRB]

Yeah hard drives can die over time and considering you have some bad sectors its time for a change.

Granted I have seen drives that are old but still work today but they have to be made right, typically WD drives have the better lifespans

[Lady Fitzgerald]

All media, be it HDDs, SSDs, ODs (Optical Discs), floppies, etc. are subject to failure, often sudden and irrecoverable, at anytime no matter their age or quality. I had a WD Black arrive DOA once and also had a Samsung 850 EVO also arrive DOA and both are good quality drives.

 

One has to assume that, given enough time, all drives are going to fail and take proactive measures to ensure against data loss. For data to be reasonably safe, it must exist in three separate places, such as on the computer, on an onsite backup drive, and on an offsite backup drive (for a backup drive to be a true backup, it must be kept powered down, disconnected from the computer, and stored away from the computer).

 

I've had relatively few drive failures but I still keep a spare drive of each kind on hand so, when (notice I said when, not if) one does die, I can quickly replace it, then recover my data from one of my backups. This gives me more time to either buy a new drive or get a warranty replacement with minimal down time (I live in a megalopolis yet no one carries the drives I use in stock locally).