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25,000-Drive Study Gives Insight On How Long Hard Drives Actually Last

Posted by timothy on from the when-they-go-they-go dept.

MrSeb writes with this excerpt, linking to several pretty graphs: "For more than 30 years, the realm of computing has been intrinsically linked to the humble hard drive. It has been a complex and sometimes torturous relationship, but there's no denying the huge role that hard drives have played in the growth and popularization of PCs, and more recently in the rapid expansion of online and cloud storage. Given our exceedingly heavy reliance on hard drives, it's very, very weird that one piece of vital information still eludes us: How long does a hard drive last? According to some new data, gathered from 25,000 hard drives that have been spinning for four years, it turns out that hard drives actually have a surprisingly low failure rate."

7 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Um.. by alen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    over the last 20 years i've used almost every brand of hard drive and have had all the brands fail at least once. every single brand has had quality issues at one time or another

  2. 20% failure rate in 3 years is LOW? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> hard drives actually have a surprisingly low failure rate.

    You call a 20% failure rate in 3 years LOW? My career rate is closer to 5% over 5 years - who keeps buying all those crappy hard drives?

    1. Re:20% failure rate in 3 years is LOW? by the_other_chewey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Careful. These are consumer grade drives. In other words, they're meant for use by typical consumers, where the disk spends 99.9999% of its time track following and running in a relatively low power state.

      That would amount to about 32 seconds of activity per year.
      There's more drive activity than that in a single Windows boot.
      Stop making up numbers.

  3. Only four years? by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Four years isn't long enough. Come back to us when you reach 6 or 8 years. The study looked at drives during the warranty period (WD drives have 5 year warranty).

    Also the information they presented doesn't show that low of a failure rate.

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  4. Useless study by slashmydots · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This study was completely useless. WHAT BRAND WERE THEY?! Hitachis and Fujitsus have a higher failure rate by a factor of about ten than a top of the line Seagate drive.

  5. Re:Brands/temperatures/power cycling by jhumkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only my personal experience but as for "power cycling" . . . I follow one basic rule.

    If you turn it off every night (when you go home from work) . . . it'll work fine, and last five years . . . then you're in the danger zone.
    If you LEAVE IT ON for weeks at a time and NEVER turn it off . . . it'll work fine, and last five years . . . then you're in the danger zone.
    What you NEVER want to do is . . . run it for a year (like at a factory plant) then turn it off for a week vacation. You're toast. (In my limited experience of 28 years) . . . if you turn it off that week . . . there is a 75% chance . . . it'll never turn on again.

    I don't know if the "grease" settles, or the metal binds . . . I just know if its been on a year . . . don't turn it off for more than an hour or two if you want it to continue to work.

    --
    No, I don't remember your name. But the memory mapped screen on a TRS80 from 1977 is from 15360 to 16383 if that helps.
  6. Next step by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Run the test longer and show us the data for span of 10 years. Additionally, reveal the brands and models of the disks. Thanks.