Question Hard disk life expectancy

[mladja48]

Every article I read says that the average life expectancy of a hard drive is 3-5 years but I've had mine for 14 years with no problems.

Is my hard drive about to die any day now ?

 

[kanewolf]

Every article I read says that the average life expectancy of a hard drive is 3-5 years but I've had mine for 14 years with no problems.

Is my hard drive about to die any day now ?

Unknown. What does the SMART status say?
Hard drives are just like people. Most live to 70 (the 5 year HD average), a very few live to 109 (your 14 year old disk). But just like people, there is no definitive way to predict which people will die tomorrow.

 

[mladja48]

Unknown. What does the SMART status say?
Hard drives are just like people. Most live to 70 (the 5 year HD average), a very few live to 109 (your 14 year old disk). But just like people, there is no definitive way to predict which people will die tomorrow.

Well I tried using Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics.
When I click show SMART Drive Info it shows various attributes of the hard drive and that everything checks out okay.

 

[jsmithepa]

but I've had mine for 14 years with no problems.

So this information is 14 years outdated.

TV used to last my parents like 30 years but these days, furgitaboutit.

Blame on ever-higher capacity, less room for error, and these days HD are commodity items, you have to wonder if they do any QA at all.

But as long as u have backups (insurance) ur good.

 

[ElectrO_90]

Download and install Hard Disk Sentinel - this will tell you about your HD life in ENGLISH and not some numbers SMART shows you.

 

[cryoburner]

I'm pretty sure most drives will last well over 5 years, and a majority will probably last into the 10+ year range under typical usage conditions. On the other hand, some drives will fail within their first year, so there's no guarantee that a hard drive will be reliable at any point. Not all drives are built the same, and may be subject to different conditions while in use, along with different power-on hours each day, and build quality can even vary from one unit to the next, so it's anyone's guess how long a particular drive will last. If you value any data on a drive, you should have it backed up on another drive no matter how old it is.

 

[mdd1963]

As soon as you begin to rely on it, and can't risk it's failure, that is when it will die.

Just keep your valuable files (photos, docs) backed up elsewhere....twice, in separate locations....!

(Naturally, if prepared for it's failure, it never will!)

 

[Math Geek]

i tend to use older drives like that for local data storage and keep windows and programs running from a newer drive. this way the drive is not being as heavily used in its old age but still gets to remain useful.

no telling when it will go but i'd rather it take out some data that is backed up elsewhere than to take my windows install and all my programs settings and so on. wish we could guess but in the end it'll die when it feels like it and not a moment sooner

 

[Sk8ter]

Download and install Crystal disk info ! best free utility to check any HDD ...

 

[mladja48]

Download and install Crystal disk info ! best free utility to check any HDD ...

I already have it installed and a couple others and they all say the HDD checks out and that nothing's wrong with it.

I don't even experience any problems with it it's just confusing to me how every article I read says that it should've died a decade ago.

 

[USAFRet]

I don't even experience any problems with it it's just confusing to me how every article I read says that it should've died a decade ago.

All that you read is an average.
A individual drive may last 15 years. I have a couple like that.
Or it may die 5 weeks out of the box. I had one like that a couple of years ago.

The average lifespan of 100,000 hard drives has little to do with the actual lifespan of your single drive.


As with any storage device, if there is any data on it you don't wish to lose...backups are your friend.

 

[Colif]

Also depends on if its been boot drive all that time or just storage, as less wear and tear on a storage drive that is hardly ever touched.

 

[mladja48]

Also depends on if its been boot drive all that time or just storage, as less wear and tear on a storage drive that is hardly ever touched.

It was a boot drive until january 2018, since then I just use it as storage.

 

[Colif]

Lucky you.

I have seen opposite, 3 drives died in six months, but that was long ago and I now blame the PSU. Two of them were new at the time.

 

[ElectrO_90]

If you are truly interested in hard drive failures take a look here at this chart
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/2018-hdd-failure-rates-report-from-backblaze.html
Over 100,000 drives running with failure rates etc.

 

[cryoburner]

If you are truly interested in hard drive failures take a look here at this chart

The Backblaze data is worth looking at, but you also have to consider the specific conditions those drives are put under. Backblaze uses regular consumer drives under enterprise storage conditions. Imagine a room full of server racks packed full of hard drives like this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StoragePod.jpg

Those are undoubtedly different from the conditions most will put a drive under in their own system, though it's not exactly clear whether they might be better or worse for drive reliability.

And while they currently show an average annual failure rate of less than 2% across models, I don't think they keep drives long enough to determine whether that rate will increase significantly after a number of years. In the article, they mention replacing many of their 2, 3 and 4TB drives with higher capacity models this year, so it's likely that all their drives will be phased out long before getting near that ten-year range.