Discover the Life Span of an External HDD | Expert Insights

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    Hdd Life Span
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The lifespan of an external HDD can be unpredictable, with the risk of failure often occurring sooner than anticipated. A study indicates that the time to failure is typically shorter than the duration one might wish to retain data. Therefore, establishing a robust backup strategy is crucial. Real-world experiences highlight that drives can fail unexpectedly, as evidenced by a situation where multiple identical workstations experienced significant disk failures after three years of continuous use. While some older systems may still function well, the general consensus is that all hard drives are susceptible to failure at any time. To safeguard important data, it is advisable to back it up to multiple locations, including off-site storage options like cloud services. Despite recent success in avoiding drive failures, past experiences show that data loss can occur, underscoring the importance of proactive data management.
MathematicalPhysicist
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I have an external HDD with a lot of information stored in it, my question is what exactly the life span of an external HDD?

Thnaks in advance.
 
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The practical answer is "the time to failuer is usually shorter than the time you wanted to keep the data for".

In other words, if you don't have a strategy for making backups, start one now!

FWIW, we once had a situation at work where we changed workstation suppliers, and installed a few hundred identical workstations at the same time. Aboot 3 years later (after running 24 hours a day 365 days a year), they started dropping like flies with disk failures. After about 10% failures within a few months, we decided to replace all the disks - it was less disruptive to do that in a planned manner than fixing them one at a time as they crashed.
 
I have a 1995 pentium 200 on a Iwill ultra fast and wide scsi motherboard and the entire system still runs fine...even with two sound cards and a video capture system in it's slots.

I turn it off multiple times per day and have never left it on constantly.

The system drive is ide 1.6 gig and the other drives are scsi.
 
I have also many mathematical pdf files, and I have stored in a Sony External HDD but Recently I move these all to Skydrive. Skydrive and iCloud seems to be the best way to store your important data.
 
ANY hard drive can fail at any time--or could last for decades. If you have any information on a drive that you cannot afford to lose, be sure to copy it to another drive (and perhaps to a drive that you can store off-site as well).
 
In recent years, I have not had a single hard drive failure. And I work with a lot of computers. But over the last 30 years, I've had several drives fail.
 
I just lost 750 GB drive this month. Not that I have lost any valuable data.
 

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