How long do disk drives last?

Discussion in 'hardware' started by SweX, Nov 12, 2013.

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  1. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    :thumb: :thumb: :thumb: :D
    Same here.
    I had disks almost from every company that have failed me but all of them failed in the first 1-5 weeks of usage. Every disk of mine that lasted more than 3 months is still functioning.(1/3 of them are more than 10 years old)

    Panagiotis
     
  2. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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    Putting hard drive reliability to the test shows not all disks are equal.

    -- Tom
     
  3. Bill_Bright

    Bill_Bright Registered Member

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  4. SweX

    SweX Registered Member

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  5. Bill_Bright

    Bill_Bright Registered Member

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    :oops: Going back to bed now.
     
  6. Banzi

    Banzi Registered Member

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    I stay away from Seagate drives due to every one of them that I have owned in the past failing. Other drives from other manufacturers have lasted much longer.

    Was gutted that Samsung that made damn good reliable drives sold them to Seagate.

    Have also noticed that WD drives (the red or black ones) seem to have a very high failure rate as well then the replacement drives were DOA.
     
  7. SweX

    SweX Registered Member

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    I rather thank you for posting it again, since it seems that my post wich was meant as a bump to this thread went quite unnoticed for some reason ;)
     
  8. luciddream

    luciddream Registered Member

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    I wonder why they didn't test the WD "Blue" line? Do they figure because they're the cheapest that they'll perform poorly compared to the rest? Because from what I've heard and experienced first hand it's to the contrary. I've heard of problems with the Green & Black lines, but the Blue's are like tanks. Tricking them out by making them faster, quieter, or more energy efficient obviously has side effects. And I suspected that may be the case and it's why I stuck with Blue. That and the cost. And I've never been disappointed.
     
  9. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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    Hard Drive Reliability Study Flawed?.

    -- Tom
     
  10. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    I believe the study was done by a beancounter engineer wannabe.
     
  11. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    The WD disks I've had fail on me (home environment) are:

    1- 500GB MyBook
    I believe it failed from age and excessive defragging and file compression. Being an older unit it had 4 or 5 platters to begin with and ran hot in a fanless enclosure. The enclosure was vertically oriented, and afforded some convective cooling. And it was enough to satisfy a new drive that wasn't generating a lot of heat. At some point, the scales tipped and the disk made just a little more heat. A natural behavior as the mechanism ages. The servo positioner circuitry works a little harder. And it runs just a bit warmer. As the disk continued to age, the imbalance between heat generated and what was dissipated grew exponentially. Soon it would reach temps of 70-75C.

    2- 320GB Passport
    I do not know the aggravating factor in this.

    3- 500GB Passport
    This was placed directly on top of a cellphone. Within minutes it developed all sorts of errors and delays.

    4- 60GB Firewire 1394 external
    This disk tended to run on the warm side. But the marketing drones and beancounters decided to place the bare drive in horizontal form factor, totally airtight with no fan. And of course the disk overheated completely and burned itself out. Lifespan of this disk (and its replacements) were measured in days at best.

    To their credit WD RMA'd them all.

    I have a 1TB MyBook that developed a bad sector due to power brownout, it was repaired via HDD Regenerator several years ago and continues to function normally. I recorded the sector number and made a point to check it. It is alright. However, the data that occupied the faulty sector was no longer valid.

    I have several other disks, 200MB, 345MB, 540MB 1.1GB, 1.6GB, 120GB x5, 60GB, 80GB, 27GB, 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 2TB x8. And they all seem to be in order.

    160GB 1x Samsung - used and abused and working great. Huge amount of spinups and spindowns.

    100GB Fujitsu - failed in 3 or 4 years, due to excessive defragging again.

    2 pallets of Iomega Zip disks.

    4,000+ 5.25" floppies (6 have gone bad).

    300 or so 3.5" disks, almost 90 have failed to date.

    50 or so odd CD-R/W discs, While the newer discs seem to be alright, the early 1st and 2nd gen drives (and discs) had a 100% fail rate for me.

    And of course the star of my motley assemblage of disks at home is a 10MB Xebec from the early 1980's. Big heavy thing half the size and weight of an Osbourne 1. Still works and has original data I stored on it. It has a Z80 CPU inside to act as a controller, SASI interface with a 1"inch diameter cable for drive-to-host connection, and a power supply big enough to power a PC and jumpstart a car battery. You have to manually run a small program that parks the heads. This is a stepper motor drive with metal band head positioner.

    I also have a couple of Corvus Constellations, I don't know the mfg of the mechanism inside. 5MB, 11MB, 20MB IIRC. Don't know the exact history since I'm not the 1st owner of them. Don't know if they still work, but I believe they do.

    In the corporate environment I prefer WD RE Enterprise. Or SSD - but SSD is another topic entirely.
     
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