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How Often Do You Replace Your Hard Drives?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mean-time-between-failure dept.

Telemachas asks: "I recently purchased a Dell P4 2.8 GHz swap meet computer with a 200 gig hard disk for a good price and all is working fine. It does not seem prudent, however, to trust my data on a swap meet item. For another @ $ 75.00 each I can purchase new 200 gig HDDs. I would also like to do my first RAID system. I am now wondering how often, if at all, do Slashdot readers replace their HDDs?"

2 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Uhh... by Omeger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When they break?

    1. Re:Uhh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course. For HDDs the Time Between Failure distribution is just too broad.

      If you replace them on a schedule, you're still not guaranteed 100% reliability because a drive can fail way before MTBF, and you waste the drives that wouldn't fail if you had kept them. Seems like a lose-lose situation to me.

      So backup often, or use RAID. Replace the HDDs when they break.