Hard drives

chudtopia · April 27, 2021

I was wondering how long a hard drive can last if it had clean air and doesn't get shaken. And if it does fail, what exactly would possible be the cause

CommanderAlex · April 27, 2021

Hard drives can last for many years when there aren't a lot of disturbances to the drive. Think bumps, drops, shakes, vibrations, shutdowns, also heat, amount of write/erase happening. Since hard drives are mechanical in nature (high RPM electric motor, write/read head), the most probably cause is the fragile head that reads and writes to the magnetic disk fail due to wear and tear. Also, in the event of the drive being dropped while running, this can result in the head crashing into the disk, which then scratches and removes the metallic coating on the disk, destroying your data.

WereCatf · April 27, 2021

4 minutes ago, chudtopia said:

I was wondering how long a hard drive can last if it had clean air and doesn't get shaken.

Entirely down to luck. There are HDDs that are 20 years old and still working, I have drives that are 12 years or so and still in use, but there are also drives that die within months.