Storage: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives?
- 5/29/09 1:02 PM
Seagate 7200.11
by drronlech - 5/31/09 4:32 AM In reply to: Life Expectancy by drronlechAs soon as I learned of the firmware problem on the 7200.11 drives, the life expectancy of those drives became ZERO. All servers were in RAID 1 format, so I gradually replaced one channel and eventually the other with Western Digital Black Drives with 5 yr warranties.
Definitely!
by kevsmail - 5/22/09 6:07 PM In reply to: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It is a mechanical device, and mechanical devices wear out by their very nature - bearings wear out, motors die.
I look at external drives as almost disposable nowadays. I had a WD 300GB MyBook croak after 1 year + 2 weeks, just out of warranty. Now, I use a combination of DVDs and an external 500GB Maxtor drive. I'll probably move the data from the Maxtor to a new external drive in 2 years or so, before it dies with all my data.
Hard drive expectancy?
by kostas 6 - 5/31/09 11:08 PM In reply to: Definitely! by kevsmailIhave the same question.Iam always use LACIE hard drive for over 4 years ago.The quarantee ended before3 years,Iam usually stored data,photo,music movies and backup data.What did you suggested?
LIfe expectancy of a hard drive
by m047375 - 5/22/09 6:38 PM In reply to: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There can be no realistic life "expactancy" projection for hard disk mechanisms. MTBF you can look up and it speaks for itself. I do not see how anyone can provide a reasonable outlook to the question. Well, other than manufacturing 'knowing' they have put in potentially weak parts because corporate decided to save $$ or knowledge of a flaw etc. However, this won't be public.
You have made it 5 yrs so you are doing the right thing whatever that is. Saying that the moving parts don't fail and you continue to keep it in good care ( users can crash externals in one slight movement); Let's say it continues to work. Then it is extimated that the platters can take reads and write overs to over 100,000 times. In perspective that is over 270 years if you did a backup every day!
'magnetic spacing loss theory' is used to characterize the head-media separation as a function of temperature, altitude, humidity, and HDD operating mode.
However there is no definitive research as models are still being defined to test these factors.
Yes there is
by little peasant - 5/30/09 5:54 PM In reply to: LIfe expectancy of a hard drive by m047375Hello i'm a student MCT at HoWest Belgium.
and according to what we've seen in class, i can only conclude that there is a life expectancy for both USB hard drives, flash drives, SSD, ...
this is due to the fact that most datastorage devices are based on the same theory, to isolate electrons. They use different isolators in each hard drive and the life expectancy of the hard drive can be "calculated" knowing the isolators used in the hard drive.
Though most of the time the malfunctioning of a storage device isn't due to the isolator material, but due to some other factor, ...
There is one advice i can give you.
Which is to never try to save money on storage devices, seriously don't.
Cause i've heard people say "OOH look a 500 GB hard drive for only 50 euro !", but when you read online forums about those hard drives, you're more likely to find hundreds of topics listing failures and malfunctions, etc ...
i myself have been using packard bell hard drives for quite some time now and they're very easy to use and hardly ever malfunction.
If you are keen on having a good hard drive, i'd advice you to spend a couple 100 extra and buy a solid state disk. They're the best of the best out there and are a LOT faster.
But what about L-E with STORED drives???
by splungekid - 5/31/09 8:03 PM In reply to: LIfe expectancy of a hard drive by m047375Several photographer friends use external drives to store their photography. Once a drive is filled, it is placed upon a shelf for future retrieval. Unused except for that moment of need. They are convinced that this procedure is safer than using CD / DVD media as backup.
I am not educated in this field, however, it would seem reasonable that an item designed to spin, would actually fail in a much shorter run time after sitting idle for lengths of time. This therefore would actually mean that your external drive security would basically extend to the current drive being used.
Perhaps this is too far off topic. In real life I know 2 people whose total of 3 external drives have failed by simply sitting on the shelf, and definitely not due to hours run.
Any thoughts?
External Hard Drive life expectancy
by letmepicyou - 5/22/09 6:43 PM In reply to: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
According to A+ course work (and personal experience), the magnetic bit strength of any hard drive has a half-life of around 5 years. That means the strength of the magnetic particles on the surface of a hard drive have lost 50% of their field strength in 5 years time. Not to mention the fact most external hard drives get much less cooling than the hard drive in a typical computer. If you ask me, I would say it's time to get a new external hard drive, keep using the old one till it dies, but begin making back-ups of your back-ups using another external now, in case the old one does fail. Most hard drives I've seen that don't fail in the first year, fail after about 5 years.
Good luck and remember, keep backing up!
hard drive heading for the grave yard
by tom56071 - 5/22/09 7:01 PM In reply to: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
they go to the perly gates like everything with out warning id back up your stuff as much as possible heard drives only last so many hours it depends how much you use it once they go your stuff can be lost you then have to go to someone that can hack the stuff off the plate in the drive
Hard Drive Life Expectancy
by dminott - 5/22/09 7:14 PM In reply to: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Methinks you are overdue for a drive replacement!
Drives DO wear out. Newer drives have S.M.A.R.T technology that monitors the drive's condition and can report problems. Routines can check the surface and block bad sectors, moving the data to a good sector, however, this not only reduces the drives capacity, but causes fragmentation problems. With the cost of today's drives plummeting, your best bet is to spring for a new (probably faster, quieter and cooler) drive and save the old one as a backup, or for test purposes. I've seen current 1 TB (yes, that's Terabyte!) drives for $75 or less. Smaller drives for MUCH less!
Good luck - but don't count on luck!
Dave
Hard drive space
by yenaro - 5/30/09 1:13 AM In reply to: Hard Drive Life Expectancy by dminottI had a hard disk of 80 GB, now after seven years, I can hardly use only 20 GB of it. Space is important.
Sometimes it's the interface that fails, not the drive.
by Reinstall - 5/30/09 1:11 PM In reply to: Hard drive space by yenaroI've had several external drives fail, once it was a blown diode in the power section, another it was an IC on the driver board. Both times I was able to pull the actual drive and install in another case, which was very inexpensive.
Remember to never unplug a powered up drive by pulling the end of the power adapter that connects to the drive, pull the 120vac side first.
There's a voltage spike when the field collapses in a inductor, etc, that can create a spike that can fail something down stream,(talking external drives that are powered with a 120vac adapter).
Why are you worried?
by shanedr - 5/30/09 5:20 AM In reply to: Hard Drive Life Expectancy by dminottThe odds of an external hard drive failing when the hard drive you need to reinstall your backed up data to has failed is so remote that it shouldn't be a concern.
Run your external hard drive until it fails or shows signs of failure. Then replace it and do an immediate back-up.
Best of all situations is when you have a desktop and a laptop that you use. I update each computer from the other by flash drive. Then at back-up time I back-up one, then restore from back-up the other. Which leaves me with three identical drives. If one of your computers has a second hard drive then before I do a back-up I use the old back-up to place an older back-up on that extra hard drive. Then overwrite the external hard drive with the new back-up. That way I have three copies of my data plus an older version on that extra internal drive just in case something has recently corrupted my data. The time between back-ups should be enough time to discover if my data has become corrupted.
One thing I do for further protection is to keep my external hard drive in a fire safe.
For the paranoid a second external hard drive with alternating with one kept in a safe deposit box at your bank should satisfy the most paranoid.
But even with that I cannot see any value in replacing a hard drive before it has failed or shows signs of failure.
Life expectancy of external hard drives varies
by ben_myers - 5/22/09 7:15 PM In reply to: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The life expectancy of external hard drives varies. Let's rephrase the question: "What can I do to get the longest life out of an external hard drive?"
To look at the problem from the point of view of a hardware engineer, you want minimize wear on the bearings of the spinning drive platters inside and you want to make sure that the drive does not get jolted, especially when it is powered up. A third, and possibly minor consideration is heat. The external drive casing needs to be well ventilated to keep the drive from overheating.
If you are using an external hard drive as additional storage for your desktop or laptop, make sure you power down the external drive whenever you power down the system.
If you are using an external drive only for backing up data, you want to have it powered up when in use, powered down when done, and kept in a safe place when not in use.
Always handle the drive carefully, so it won't get dropped or subjected to many Gs of force.
I have clients who have used external drives for backup for about 5 years now, and the drives still work perfectly. How long an external drive lasts depends on how well you care for it.
Personally, there are some brands of drives I avoid, due to unfavorable past experiences. And every brand of drive has its models which are absolute dogs. The drive manufacturers compete very aggressively on price, price, price, with seldom a mention of reliability predictions. I suppose I could annoy one or more drive manufacturers by saying what those brands are, but I won't.
... Ben Myers
Life Span? Definitely!
by Zorched - 5/22/09 8:52 PM In reply to: Life expectancy of external hard drives varies by ben_myersUnderstand first that a company will only warranty a device for a period of time that is statistically beneficial for them. In other words, if they find that a large number of their drives start failing after three years, they most likely won't warranty them beyond that three years. My new fridge (supposedly a 20 year appliance) came with a 1-year warranty. Gives you faith in the quality of manufactured goods these days, doesn't it?
Where I'm going with this is the fact that the two biggest manufacturers have their warranty periods at 3 years. Beyond that the failure curves go up to the point where it's not financially feasible to warranty them. Most drives become iffy after 5 years, but as said before by others there are mitigating factors involved.
Humidity and temperature. If either is too high for prolonged periods, the lifespan will decrease. If the humidity is too low, you have to be more careful about static shocks, but not lifespan.
Type of enclosure. A plastic enclosure insulates the drive and does not allow for heat to be transferred away to the exterior of the enclosure. The only way around this is to either adequately perforate the enclosure or add a fan. If either of these cases are present, then you are okay. A metal enclosure effectively becomes a heatsink for the drive and promotes dissipation as long as the drive touches the enclosure walls.
Amount of time run. If you don't power the drive with each boot of the computer, then its effective lifespan will be longer. If you run it 24/7 then it won't last as long. It's kind of like a car in that regard. In the same vein, if you don't run it at all for long periods of time and the humidity is high, the bearings could rust. Also, if there is a lot of heavy data usage, then it may wear out sooner. Just sitting there spinning is not so bad for it, but if it's clicking and buzzing all the time, then the head arms are what's making that noise and they could wear out sooner. Defragging a drive can help with this type of wear.
All of this boiled down: yes, they do have a lifespan. Yes, you should replace it soon if you want to have a reliable backup. I replace mine every three years as the warranties expire. They're cheap enough now that it's not too big of a deal. I honestly have two forms of backup: Periodic DVD backups and a regular hard drive one.
I keep the old ones around for a while, just in case I need a backup. DO NOT just give the old drive away without making sure you erase and repartition the drive. If you want to be absolutely sure, then use a data shredder app, erase everything, repartition it, and do a long format. If disposing of a hard drive, I take the circuit board off the back and recycle it properly, then beat the drive with a sledge hammer. It's great stress relief. The reason for this paranoia is that if someone gets a hold of the drive and reconstructs the data, then I might as well just hand them my quicken files in person and say, "here, take it for free!"
Refrigerators
by EscapePod - 5/30/09 7:41 AM In reply to: Life Span? Definitely! by ZorchedRefrigerators, and stoves, etc., come with 1-year warranties so that the manufacturers and retailers can SELL you extended warranties -- no other reason.
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