Do mechanical Hard drives have Limited write cycles?

[Sagar_20]

That's the question. Also, How much is the average Life expectancy of a Mechanical 7200 rpm Pc Hard Drive, like Seagate Barracuda or WD Blue/ WD Black ?

 

[gdmaclew]

Mechanical hard drives do not have limited write cycles.
As for the life expectancy, it depends on many factors such as usage, environment (operating temperature) and so on.
They should all have an MTBF listed somewhere in their literature or for those companies that no longer use MTBF, some other measurement tools...

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=665

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Build-quality is also a factor which affects the longevity of an HDD.

Generally, I've found Seagate one's to be inferior to WD ones on that score, based on my experience of using both brands over the years. WD is always my brand of choice, with Hitachi running a close second. Seagate I always avoid.

 

[gdmaclew]

Build-quality is also a factor which affects the longevity of an HDD.

Generally, I've found Seagate one's to be inferior to WD ones on that score, based on my experience of using both brands over the years. WD is always my brand of choice, with Hitachi running a close second. Seagate I always avoid.

I second your choice. WD - OK. Seagate - No. Personal experience.

 

[ArtPog]

There's hardly a dime's worth of difference between various makes/models of HDDs. We've been working with hundreds (maybe thousands!) of all kinds of HDDs over many, many years in a myriad of systems, and we can rarely, if ever, find any significant real-life differences between different brands & models as to performance, longevity, and the like that in our experience impact the overwhelming majority of PC users one way or the other.

When you purchase a HDD you do so principally for the disk-space capacity you need. Perhaps all things being equal, consider a 7200 RPM model in lieu of a 5400 RPM one. But that's about it. Other than that it's nothing more than a crapshoot.

There's only one thing you really have to know about HDDs. THEY'RE GOING TO FAIL. Maybe not today, not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, not this year...BUT THEY'RE GOING TO FAIL. You don't know when that is; I don't know when that is; no one knows when that is. But they're going to fail at some time.

So what this all brings us to is simply this. It is crucial for the PC user to create & maintain comprehensive backups of their systems through whatever backup strategy meets that objective. And to do so on a reasonably frequent/routine basis so that he/she has at hand the means to restore their system(s) to a functional one - and be able to do so reasonably quickly & easily.

All the rest is conversation. Capiche?

 

[Sagar_20]

Build-quality is also a factor which affects the longevity of an HDD.

Generally, I've found Seagate one's to be inferior to WD ones on that score, based on my experience of using both brands over the years. WD is always my brand of choice, with Hitachi running a close second. Seagate I always avoid.

My Seagate Barracuda from 2011 has never given me a problem though. I don't know how long it's going to last but it's good to know it does not have limited write cycles unlike SSD's cause i have already performed a lot of R/W operations on it during its life time. The performance may have degraded for sure because not Write speeds are not going beyond 25 MB/s anymore. They stay between 18 to 25 MB/s while a few years back they would jump all the way up to 35 MB/s. In case it fails some day, i'm hoping i can get my Data recovered?