How long do HDD last for you?

[alyen]

I haven't bought a HDD in over 10 years, but I have  a few sitting around unused that may or may not work. I used them for saving rendered images/animation, but I always find the drives starting having major problems or even unusable within 2 to 3 years. They were just the regular ones, nothing special like red edition or whatever grading they used. I haven't done much rendering in recent years, but so far the only 2.5" SDD (Adata) that ever completly broke down after 5 years. Another thing I never liked about HDD was the humming sounds from them so eventually switched to 2.5" SDD since they seem to be more reliable over time.

 

• Is there a better grade of hard drives or do I just have bad luck?
• Does moving around the HDD cause problems? I can recall one time a HDD stopped working right after I had moved.

 

For now I'm just using whatever 2.5" SDD I have sitting around for rendering over night, but am looking for something that may be more reliable.  I try not to save images onto the M.2 drive and can only have 1 in my systems.

[GOTSpectrum]

I've got two drives with over 50k hours on them atm, planning to replace them soon though 

[Electronics Wizardy]

I have many drives with 50k+ hours and some that are a decade or two old that work without issues.

 

Shock can easily kill a hdd. 

 

They make server grade drive which may be a bit better for relability, but with the price increase its better to get 2 cheaper drives with the same data than one better drive.

 

If you want to keep data for the long term keeping multiple copies and monitoring the data is important.

[ItTakes2ToMango]

My main rig has had a 2tb seagate in it for the better half of 8 years and is still performing strong. Probably has had an average usage of 2-6 hours a day... 

12 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

I've got two drives with over 50k hours on them atm, planning to replace them soon though 

Are you guys reading the total hours from somewhere in windows? Or are you just guesstimating?

[GOTSpectrum]

Just now, ItTakes2ToMango said:

Are you guys reading the total hours from somewhere in windows? Or are you just guesstimating?

CrystalDiskInfo is an amazing software utility for Hard Drive data 

[Middcore]

The two in my PC right now have 40k and 38.5k hours on them and CrystalDisk gives them a clean bill of health.

[ToboRobot]

That external HDD with CFL lights from the early 2000s still works.

[thevictor390]

Out of every hard drive I have ever used, only two have died (the rest I just stopped using for one reason or another). The drives I recently took out of my machine had 90k+ hours and were from 2009.

[YoungBlade]

31 minutes ago, alyen said:

• Is there a better grade of hard drives or do I just have bad luck?
• Does moving around the HDD cause problems? I can recall one time a HDD stopped working right after I had moved.

Yes, there are better and worse grades of hard drives. Enterprise series drives (Seagate Exos and WD Gold) are rated for longer lifespans and have features that help them resist damage by being more resistant to vibrations. Consumer grade drives (Seagate Barracuda and WD Blue) tend not to last as long, but tend to be cheaper.

 

Moving around hard drives can absolutely make them fail. Most of the hard drives I've seen fail have failed right after being dropped or hit in some fashion. Old age is also a factor, but motion and shock especially can easily kill a hard drive.

 

All that said, a hard drive failing after 2-3 years isn't what I would call "normal," but it's not exactly out of the question either. WD only puts a 2 year warranty on their WD Blue drives, so they clearly don't think that the vast majority of their drives are going to last much longer than that - they're expecting some portion of them to fail in that time. While you've been unlucky, I don't think you've been that unlucky - assuming you've been buying consumer grade drives.

[Kilrah]

Only had 2 fail in 20+ years, and one was my fault (bumped it against a hard case while it was running).

 

Vibration is a major concern other than shock. There's been someone here recently who had enterprise grade drives fail one after the other in months due to improper mounting, rattling in the case because only held by one screw.

[Needfuldoer]

I've had my hands on dozens of hard drives over the years, and I've only had a couple failures.

 

One was a drive I dropped, the other was a drive that spent too long in a cheesy USB enclosure with inadequate cooling.

 

I've got drives from the late 80s that still work, but they've obviously spent a lot of time powered down on a shelf. 

[WereCat]

In desktop 10y+

 

In laptop 1y-5y

[8tg]

The second SSDs became viable for consumer machines is the second I started using them, though for the few hard drives I had until recently, some of them were over 15 years old and worked fine. Mostly laptop ide drives. And even today I have two laptops from 1997, both with their original hard drives, one of which actually has the precursor to SMART, IntelliSafe, and reports 14800 power on cycles, implying the machine was turned on and off repeatedly all over the course of each day for a long time, and it still has zero issues and no reported risk. Though whatever that may mean, it’s not exactly the same way smart works.

 

Hard drive health is mostly down to how the drive is treated in its environment in my experience, rather than how it’s used when it’s there. The hard drive itself can likely operate without issue for massively extended periods of time if it’s handled well and is working in a good environment.

[Senzelian]

I never had any HDDs fail, tho I only owned two 1TB Toshiba drives and 4 WD 1TB Reds.

 

[Ralf]

My Samsung 320GB IDE drive(16 years old) just failed last week in my parents PC. My other drives Samsung 1TB Sata and two WD Green 2TB drives still work(they are from 2010-2011) with 35-40k hours, but I only use them as external drives since 2020.

 

I feel like HDD's slow down over time, HDSentinel does not find any errors and Performance and Health is at 100%, but after 3years of use as OS drive(Samsung 320GB Sata) it was noticeably slower even after fresh install.

 

My WD Red Plus 4TB HDD and Samsung 870 EVO 1TB SSD died last year(they were both one year old), my first drive failures.

[ThousandBlade]

20GB USB hard drive from 1999 still works to this day.

500GB hard drive that came from a toshiba laptop from 2007, used in multiple machines died in 2018, after being toppled over in a SFF machine.

1TB Segate hard drive bought in 2014, died in 2016 after being dropped in a hard drive enclosure.

4TB WD red, bought in 2014, died in 2017. from small child always shaking and whacking the computer tower.

 

Generally, they last up to 10 years with good care.

 

Vibration kills them very quickly.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I have many drives with 50k+ hours and some that are a decade or two old that work without issues.

 

Shock can easily kill a hdd. 

 

They make server grade drive which may be a bit better for relability, but with the price increase its better to get 2 cheaper drives with the same data than one better drive.

 

If you want to keep data for the long term keeping multiple copies and monitoring the data is important.

Unless of course you are stacking more than two drives, then potentially you want NAS/Enterprise grade which are designed to handle the vibration from multiple drives.  Though the funny thing is, often External USB drives contain NAS/Enterprise grade drives, they just lack the warranty.

[porina]

Within my own experience, in warranty failures are rare. I think I've only ever had two I could RMA. One was a WD 850MB (yes, MB!) with bad sectors when new, the other was an IBM DeathStar.

 

I've had countless drives fail out of warranty, but conversely I've also had some really ancient drives that refuse to die going back to IDE era. Failure is inevitable but unpredictable, so backup your data regardless.

[Ryker Robb]

6 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Though the funny thing is, often External USB drives contain NAS/Enterprise grade drives, they just lack the warranty.

Usually called "Internal use" though. And most external drives that are 6-8tb and lower, and 2.5 inch external drives, actually have standard desktop(or laptop) drives, or even "green" tier drives in them.

[dcgreen2k]

I have an 80GB IDE drive from 2002 and two 160GB SATA drives from 2006, all still working. The last time I checked, both of those SATA drives had around 50k hours on them. Funnily enough, the only drive I've ever had fail was a 120GB SATA SSD.

[alyen]

23 hours ago, GOTSpectrum said:

CrystalDiskInfo is an amazing software utility for Hard Drive data 

I also did not know it could monitor operating time.

 

So it appears the HDD are quite reliable from what you people are saying. I will store the HDD in another system or NAS that will have litle maintenance so I don't move it around. 

[HammondComputers]

pulled this out of a dead Amiga 2000. customer wanted their music files.  i installed a scsi card into an old pc.  files are still there and then booted off it with an emulator.  Still works after 35 years. that "fragile" sticker must have kept it safe and working!