At what age do hard drives typically fail?

[YourComputerGeek]

Hi,

       I have a hard drive that's 8 years old, I'm considering replacing it, but is it worth it to buy a new one? I do have some important things on the drive and it's too big to put up in the cloud. I've noticed more stuttering and speed issues with it recently, but otherwise no other issues have showed up the whole time I've owned it for, I'm stuck on what I should do! Thanks. 

[njmyers3]

I'd suggest getting a new one at that age because it's really a gamble. I've had hard drives fail sooner than 3 years after buying them and I still have working hard drives from about 10 years ago, so it varies a lot. However, you should have backups of all your important data anyway, no mater how new the hard drive is.

[Catsrules]

Drives usually die the first month in production or around the 3-7 years some places will replace drives every 3 years if it is super critical infrastructure. But most places replace every 5-6 years.

 

But like your drive they can last a lot longer. For most home users I would recommend 3 backups and not to really worry about how old the drives are. 

[YourComputerGeek]

Backup on different drives? 

[YourComputerGeek]

8 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

Drives usually die the first month in production or around the 3-7 years some places will replace drives every 3 years if it is super critical infrastructure. But most places replace every 5-6 years.

 

But like your drive they can last a lot longer. For most home users I would recommend 3 backups and not to really worry about how old the drives are. 

good to know, It's somewhat a debate for me I know for sure my drive can last longer, but having 2x the amount of space is something I would like, but it isn't exactly cheep.

[YourComputerGeek]

10 minutes ago, njmyers3 said:

I'd suggest getting a new one at that age because it's really a gamble. I've had hard drives fail sooner than 3 years after buying them and I still have working hard drives from about 10 years ago, so it varies a lot. However, you should have backups of all your important data anyway, no mater how new the hard drive is.

Alright good to know, do u back it ur info in the cloud or separate drives? 

[njmyers3]

6 minutes ago, YourComputerGeek said:

Alright good to know, do u back it ur info in the cloud or separate drives? 

I personally back everything up locally and then have several partial backups on encrypted flash drives that I give to family members. Ideally I'd have 3 copies of every file, but for media it's normally just 2. You gotta decide what is the most important data and back that up multiple times.

[Jihakuz]

You can use something like Hard Disk Sentinel to see the health and performace (remember they are not the same thing).

Your disk does sound old so you probably at least back it up.

[Catsrules]

9 minutes ago, YourComputerGeek said:

Alright good to know, do u back it ur info in the cloud or separate drives? 

For a proper backup solution It should be both aka local backup (separate drive) and offsite backup (cloud). 

 

However do as I say not as I do As I don't have a third backup of all of my data (yet). Right now it is all on separate drives in a different location in my house. I do have a small bit of my data backup on separate drives and in the cloud but that is very very important data.

[YourComputerGeek]

5 minutes ago, Jihakuz said:

You can use something like Hard Disk Sentinel to see the health and performace (remember they are not the same thing).

Your disk does sound old so you probably at least back it up.

I did and when I did do it, everything was normal, but I have noticed compared to my SSD (Major difference, I know) my hard drive doesn't get to some data fast enough for a game which causes horrible FPS drops and sometimes the game crashes, never had that before, but I believe it's normal? Not sure. 

[YourComputerGeek]

8 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

For a proper backup solution It should be both aka local backup (separate drive) and offsite backup (cloud). 

 

However do as I say not as I do As I don't have a third backup of all of my data (yet). Right now it is all on separate drives in a different location in my house. I do have a small bit of my data backup on separate drives and in the cloud but that is very very important data.

Ok, It's somewhat expensive to buy drives just to have them lying around, but it's good for peace of mind!

[YourComputerGeek]

13 minutes ago, njmyers3 said:

I personally back everything up locally and then have several partial backups on encrypted flash drives that I give to family members. Ideally I'd have 3 copies of every file, but for media it's normally just 2. You gotta decide what is the most important data and back that up multiple times.

Ok, I would like to do that, but I don't have extra drives lying around to do that and it's expensive to buy a bunch of drives, but great to know for sure! 

[AshleyAshes]

The real answer is: Any time.

 

A HDD could die the first day after you bought it or it could last 10 years.  The trick isn't to move data to new drives before inevitable failure, the trick is to have backups so that you're ready for whenever that inevitable failure happens.  Thinking you can just keep replacing drives and 'keep ahead' of failure is just erroneous thinking.

[Catsrules]

1 minute ago, YourComputerGeek said:

Ok, It's somewhat expensive to buy drives just to have them lying around, but it's good for peace of mind!

That is true, however data recovery can easily be thousands of dollars. It is much cheaper to just buy two drives. It also depends on how valuable your data is. I allways ask the question to myself. If you lost your data right now would you pay the money for a new drive with your data on it? If the answer is yes then buy a drive right now and put the data on it. If it is no then don't bother the data isn't worth it.

 

I have some data that is nice to have but I really wouldn't care if I lost it.

[YourComputerGeek]

1 hour ago, AshleyAshes said:

The real answer is: Any time.

 

A HDD could die the first day after you bought it or it could last 10 years.  The trick isn't to move data to new drives before inevitable failure, the trick is to have backups so that you're ready for whenever that inevitable failure happens.  Thinking you can just keep replacing drives and 'keep ahead' of failure is just erroneous thinking.

I don't know much about hard drives in general, I just assumed age is a major factor in most hard drive failures, as I have had old drives die on me before, but that was a long time ago, thanks for the info! 

[YourComputerGeek]

1 hour ago, Catsrules said:

That is true, however data recovery can easily be thousands of dollars. It is much cheaper to just buy two drives. It also depends on how valuable your data is. I allways ask the question to myself. If you lost your data right now would you pay the money for a new drive with your data on it? If the answer is yes then buy a drive right now and put the data on it. If it is no then don't bother the data isn't worth it.

 

I have some data that is nice to have but I really wouldn't care if I lost it.

I agree, it's more of old family photos i don't want getting loss. Most of it on the drive I can re-download like video games. Another question, is it normal for games to heavily dip  in FPS/sometimes crash the game on hard drives in certain moments? I've had that start to happen to me and not sure if that's just the fact the hard drive can't keep or it just gets slower in reading with time 

[Zodiark1593]

4 hours ago, YourComputerGeek said:

I agree, it's more of old family photos i don't want getting loss. Most of it on the drive I can re-download like video games. Another question, is it normal for games to heavily dip  in FPS/sometimes crash the game on hard drives in certain moments? I've had that start to happen to me and not sure if that's just the fact the hard drive can't keep or it just gets slower in reading with time 

With the one HDD failure I did have, everything slowed to a crawl. Boots exceeded 5 minutes, launching programs were equally slow. Etc, etc. This was a boot drive, mind you. It was about 4-5 years old. Took the opportunity to switch over to SSD.

 

I've a drive from 2000 (18-19 years old?) that still works. Another drive a few years newer that still works. An old laptop drive (9 years old) that has had a Caution SMART status for the past few years still living as a scratch drive. One of my externals I cannibalized the SATA adaptor from also functions perfectly after sitting in my drawer for the past 4 years. (i still need to destroy of the data I helped transferred for a business with this, actually).

 

One external has pretty much been switched on for several years straight before building the desktop, and has accumulated several 10ks of hours, and it still seems to be good.

 

I'm probably just absurdly lucky I only had the one failure, even with a pretty wide array of usages, or lack thereof. Still, I have copies of my stuff across multiple drives or devices. Besides what I can hold on my 128 GB flash drive however, no solid solution (yet) for my anime collection in the event my house is destroyed.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

 

9 hours ago, YourComputerGeek said:

Backup on different drives? 

 

9 hours ago, Catsrules said:

For a proper backup solution It should be both aka local backup (separate drive) and offsite backup (cloud). 

 

However do as I say not as I do As I don't have a third backup of all of my data (yet). Right now it is all on separate drives in a different location in my house. I do have a small bit of my data backup on separate drives and in the cloud but that is very very important data.

Pay attention to these people! They are the only options to reasonably ensure the safety of your data. An offsite backup doesn't have to be in the cloud; it can also be another drive (being a certified coward, I have both). On the subject of cloud backups, the only good ones are paid backup services. Stay the heck away from anything free and from cloud storage. I recommend using Backblaze for most people. The last time I checked, it was only $50/year.

 

While I do check the health of my drives every now and then just for excrement and merriment, I don't worry about them. I just run them until I notice the health has gone down, they show signs of failing (like yours is), or they up and rudely die. My data is safe because I have multiple backups. If one dies, I just pop in a new drive (I keep a spare since I can't always get new ones locally, despite living in a megalopolis) and restore my data from the backup to the new drive.

 

9 hours ago, YourComputerGeek said:

Ok, I would like to do that, but I don't have extra drives lying around to do that and it's expensive to buy a bunch of drives, but great to know for sure! 

 

9 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

The real answer is: Any time.

 

A HDD could die the first day after you bought it or it could last 10 years.  The trick isn't to move data to new drives before inevitable failure, the trick is to have backups so that you're ready for whenever that inevitable failure happens.  Thinking you can just keep replacing drives and 'keep ahead' of failure is just erroneous thinking.

 

8 hours ago, Catsrules said:

That is true, however data recovery can easily be thousands of dollars. It is much cheaper to just buy two drives. It also depends on how valuable your data is. I allways ask the question to myself. If you lost your data right now would you pay the money for a new drive with your data on it? If the answer is yes then buy a drive right now and put the data on it. If it is no then don't bother the data isn't worth it.

 

I have some data that is nice to have but I really wouldn't care if I lost it.

Again, pay attention to these people. Exactly. Any drive can fail irrecoverably fail at any time without any warning, no matter its age. I've had drives last for years (one lasted for seven years and was still running strong when I retired it), one last just shy of two years, and even a couple of new ones were DOA.

 

Yes, backup drives cost money. But that cost is a tiny fraction of what it will cost you in data recovery which can cost thousands of dollars and  comes with no guarantee of success (just an outrageous bill). As far as how much you want to spend on backups, you have to ask yourself how much is your data is worth to you. How much would it cost to replace the replaceable data. keep in mind not all data is replaceable. Can you afford to lose it?

 

If you are strapped for cash (been there, couldn't even afford the tee shirt), even one backup, while not perfect, is much better than nothing and is a good start.

[Catsrules]

6 hours ago, YourComputerGeek said:

Is it normal for games to heavily dip  in FPS/sometimes crash the game on hard drives in certain moments? I've had that start to happen to me and not sure if that's just the fact the hard drive can't keep or it just gets slower in reading with time 

It is possible I would run hard drive scanner to see if you have any bad sectors. Normally for FPS dips the hard drive wouldn't be my first suspect. I would look at video drivers, monitor CPU usage from background tasks or other running programs.  But if you do have a bad drive It can certainly cause lots of problems.

[397429721]

4 hours ago, Catsrules said:

It is possible I would run hard drive scanner to see if you have any bad sectors.

It's worth noting that just because you've not got any bad hard drive sectors it doesn't mean the drive can't fail, i had a hard drive fail recently only a couple of days after it came back fine on a disk scan. Sometimes they just break.

[YourComputerGeek]

4 hours ago, Catsrules said:

It is possible I would run hard drive scanner to see if you have any bad sectors. Normally for FPS dips the hard drive wouldn't be my first suspect. I would look at video drivers, monitor CPU usage from background tasks or other running programs.  But if you do have a bad drive It can certainly cause lots of problems.

I did some test and found out that everything else was fine, but the hard drive was at 100% usage the whole time, all my other parts weren't 

[Radium_Angel]

I just retired a 130MB (yes...MB) Maxtor drive that was built and installed in 1992.

It is not alone, I have a number of production drives that are 20+ years old....

 

I've had IBM DeathStar drives fail inside of 2 weeks.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

47 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I just retired a 130MB (yes...MB) Maxtor drive that was built and installed in 1992.

It is not alone, I have a number of production drives that are 20+ years old....

 

I've had IBM DeathStar drives fail inside of 2 weeks.

Those old Maxtors were built like brick outhouses. The drive I had that lasted seven years (half of it running 24/7) and was still running strong when I retired it was a 60GB Maxtor.

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Those old Maxtors were built like brick outhouses. The drive I had that lasted seven years (half of it running 24/7) and was still running strong when I retired it was a 60GB Maxtor.

Yes they were. Solid and run forever. It was only when Maxtor hit the 100+GB size that their quality took a nosedive

[Catsrules]

2 hours ago, YourComputerGeek said:

I did some test and found out that everything else was fine, but the hard drive was at 100% usage the whole time, all my other parts weren't 

Is that just in games or is it all of the time?

Is this drive you main boot drive? It could just be Windows is doing something in the background. Hard drives don't like to be doing multiple things as once, and window 10 loves to do things in the background.