How Long Can a Hard Disk Last in Constant Use?

[Vanadium 50]

There are some messages complaining how this, that or the other didn't last. I thought I'd share a counterexample. I was looking at SMART logs and one of my disks has been in constant use for over 12 years - a Western Digital Re.

I believe this is post "Caviar" and pre "Colors". 100,000+ hours in service. No bad sectors. No relocated sectors. I'm impressed.

Slightly less impressive was a 19 year old drive that still works, although its been in a box for 7 years.

 

[Drakkith]

Indeed. I have a 1 terabyte drive that's been running for probably 8-10 years now with no issues.

 

[FactChecker]

Anecdotal evidence is a bad thing to rely on for failure rates. Yes, you can be lucky, but you also can have bad luck.

 

[Vanadium 50]

More impressive numbers: 43 billion rotations, and almost 7 million miles of travel (at the edge of the platter).

It's also remarkable how the technology has changed: in the first 20 years of IBM PCs you had (in the non-SCSI market) MFM, RLL, ESDI, PATA/IDE and then SATA. Now we have SATA.

Anecdotal evidence is a bad thing to rely on for failure rates.

I don't think anyone has said that one good drive is all the testing you need.

 

[FactChecker]

I don't think anyone has said that one good drive is all the testing you need.

That's true. The situation is complicated. HDDs can have a higher failure rate but are much more likely to be recoverable. A failed sector on a hard drive contains less data than blocks or chips on an SSD so the data is more likely to be recoverable. See this.

 

[Rive]

I've just set up a NAS RAID around half a year ago with already used (common) disks.

It has an UPS and won't be switched off, ever.

I expect it to serve at least a few years.

... just had to replace a half year old laptop HDD recently. Hurled left and right; switched off daily.

 

[Vanadium 50]

My NAS' power supply died thir morning.

It made that forms in the garbage disposal sound and a minute later than was it. I have a new supply, but connecting it up is harder than it might seem. Lots of cables in a small space.

FWIW, every single disk in it is >5 years old. I have a new spare on the shelf in cased one goes bad, and a spare in the NAS which gets used automatically.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I've just set up a NAS RAID around half a year ago

As an aside, I am using mostly NAS and Enterprise drives on mine. I started with "regular" drives and expanded when they failed, and what's left are largely NAS and Enterprise. Two Toshiba X300s (lasted much longer than the N300)'s, 2 IronWolves (or is that Wolfs?) and 3 Seagate Enterprise Capacities (formerly Constellation). Also a HGST Ultrastar for backup.

My suspicion is that heat slowly kills consumer-grade drives.

 

[Tom.G]

For related comments see https://www.physicsforums.com/posts/6912726

Or that whole thread for that matter!

Cheers,
Tom

 

[rcgldr]

No bad sectors.

There are probably some small defects in the surface, but error correction has enough margin to correct for this.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Strictly speaking, no relocated sectors. I do a weekly SMART long test, which should pick up problems.