Storage forum: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives?

I expect there are too many variable to make a life time projection for your external hard drive. However, the reliability of most all electronics is inversely related to operating temperature. Let it get too hot and it is sure to fail far more quickly than under normal operating temperature conditions.

Hopefully your external drive is in an enclosure that sucks away the heat from the drive, and the enclosure temperature reflects the temperature of the drive itself. If you external hard drive is getting hotter than just merely warm to the touch, you are risking an early failure. If necessary, take a surplus 12 volt CPU fan from an obsolete computer; connect it to a surplus 5 volt dc cell telephone power supply, and use it to keep the external drive cool.

For 5 Years I think you have had your moneys worth, It might last another 2 or 3 years but I would NOT rely on it, backup your stuff to another HDD

Long: In general they have a "working hour limit", becouse they have motion components, and there is a "surface abrasion". If You format regularly the disk, this procedure checks the surface, and corrects errors, if it is possible. When the errors are too much, save disk content, and replace it. (S.M.A.R.T.)
External or internal disks are the same.

With the relativley cheap large volume hard drives around nowadays, its easier to always have an external backup of your external backup. Thats the way I backup, after making my mistakes..
As for the life of a hard drive..they can go at any time...but most will give you many years of service if properly looked after.
Like the man said you can never have too much memory...

I am sorry to report that you are living on borrowed time. Hard drives are mechanical devices with platters that are spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute and like a set of tires on a car, it is not a question of if they will fail but when? Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to predict a hard drive failure which is why having multiple backups is so important. The average life of a hard drive is typically thought to be about 5 years. Although many factors such as handling, temperature and just plain luck of the draw can result in failures at anytime. I personally find in my business that laptop drives are lasting about 3 years and desktop drives about 5, but all it takes is to drop your laptop once and you could be done. External Hard Drives use the very same hard drives that are found in desktop and laptop computers, however, I have found that they dont seem to last nearly as long. Maybe, users drop or mishandle them more, maybe it is poor cooling, or just plugging and unplugging them incorrectly. As far as maintenance goes, other than keeping the drive defragmented and always using the Safely Remove Hardware icon before unplugging your drive, there is not much else you can do except avoiding any sudden shock to the drive (especially while it is turned on). You should treat an external hard drive as though it were a carton of eggs and never, ever use one as your only working copy of any data that you care about without having additional backups. Drives are so inexpensive now that simply replacing them every few years is probably the best course of action.

Dana
Wayland Computer

You can power down your internal hard drive from the power setting menu. START > CONTROL PANEL (switch to classic view) > POWER OPTIONS. Simply change the setting for Turn off Hard Drive. This will spin down the hard drive after the computer has been inactive for a set period of time. NOTE: It is often debatable as to what is really worse for a hard drive. Leaving it on all the time or turning it on and off constantly. Depending on design, it may be worse for some electronics and also some mechanical devices to be subjected to the thermal stresses and power surges of constant warming up and cooling down associated with turning on and off repeatable. This has always been the similar issue when answering the question of what is best, leaving your computer turned on all the time or shutting it down?

Dana
Wayland Computer

As a retired expert on HDDs especially Microdrives, I feel qualified to discuss this topic. The MEDIA life expectancy is well over 20 years, that is, the time the media will retain the magnetic data if it's set on the shelf. The primary failure (wearout) item in any HDD is the bearings. Usually caused by machines that are run 24x7 or sudden shock. Rarely do you see a mobile drive failure by bearings in laptop drives that are used as portable machines however more and more are being used as home office machines and may be left spinning more than 12hrs/day.
For the external question, the major threat is shock caused by an accidental drop which could damage the bearings causing the disk to not run true and loss of data could occur.
Take care of the drive, limit spin hours and your drive should last for 10-15 years or more. Then there are those pesky electronic failures that just happen... Can't predict those.
Bill Heybruck, Ph.D.
Former Senior Engineer for Hitachi GST
Now Director, Industrial Solutions Lab, UNC Charlotte

It has been suggested elsewhere that the mtbf is 8 years.
This means a 1 in 8 chance each year of a single drive failing.

But I had a Samsung HDD in a Dell fail after only 3 months.

I have other HDDs which are many years old and still work just fine.

So you can never tell when an HDD is going to fail. It could be in 5 minutes or five years time.

I always backup my backups!

All mechanical devices have a life expectancy in that they will eventually fail. At five years, your hard drive is getting a little long in the tooth.

Today's hard drives are getting more and more inexpensive. My suggestion is to get two external drives, and alternate backups to both. If a drive eventually fails you will still have the other backup version.

I would also suggest backing up more often than a few times per year. Remember, your PC hard drive will also eventually fail, and you will want your backup to be as current as possible, especially with the Quicken files you are storing.

External hard drives will live forever and never die. After all there are no internal moving parts or anything that could possibly deteriorate or degrade causing harm. That is why all manufactures making these hard drives devices put a lifetime warranty on these items.

I wish I knew a definite answer, but in my experience I had two external hard drives, a MyBook(400Gig) and a Maxtor One Touch(500Gig)that died after 12 months each. I asked Maxtor to give me an estimate to restore my files and they quoted $3000.00 without even looking at it. Obviously, I didn't do it. Luckily, I still had most(but not all!!!) of my info in the hard drive, so I just bought a couple of more and it's been about 15 months now and everything is working fine. I have made dvds with my photos and made some dvds(compressed)for some of my music as well, just in case.

Look at the drive's specifications, you will find the MTBF number.

Subtract 20% from the MTBF number and "chuck" the drive when you reach your number.

Just a very good rule of thumb.

Often your first sign of failure is the "instant" when the drive fails.

Dear friend,

The average service life of a hard disk is usually given as "5 years or 20,000 hours." This means if a hard disk operates 24 hours a day, you will need to replace your drive with a new one every 1.5 to 2 years. (For specification details, refer to your hard disk drive's user manual.)
The measure of service life used by most hard disk manufacturers is "mean time between failures" (MTBF)*1 (usually quoted at between 300,000 to 500,000 hours). The ratings (for expected service life) used by PC makers are more conservative, as they are based more closely on "real world" usage conditions. Since expected service life and MTBF figures can differ by hundreds of thousands of hours, we recommend you use the expected service life value. For example, the usual service life of a 2.5 inch drive will be almost 5 years or 20,000 hours, if used at the temperatures specified for your PL. However, if a drive is operated continuously, i.e. 24 hours a day, its service life will be shorter.
Also, when using a drive in equipment that runs continuously, you can extend the drive's life by using the PL's BIOS area "sleep" feature to turn the drive OFF after it is unused for a specified period of time. (BIOS area "HDD Power Down" feature's "time" setting.

Certain hard disks are equipped with a periodic head cleaning function, which also helps to extend drive life.

*1 Mean Time Between Failures = Total operation hours (hr)
--------------------------------
Total No. of Breakdowns *2
*2 Excluding breakdowns caused by external factors such as improper handling, usage at temperature or voltage levels in excess of those specified, host PC and interface problems.

Back up the Back-up.

Sounds redundant, but that is what backups are.

A minimum of 3 backups in different places. Computer, an external drive, and either another drive, disks, online service, etc. kept not connected to your system.

I recently had both my 2 year old HP laptop and 4 year old Maxtor drive expire 3 days apart. My DVD backups saved the day on are now on my "other then HP" laptop.

HR

It has been my experience that they do in fact have a life expectancy. As with conventional hard drives like in your pc the external drive has moving parts, platers, heads, and hopefully a fan. They are a normal drive with a fancy package. My question would be do you leave in on all the time or only when backing up files? Some things to make it last longer would be keep it as cool as possible while it is on. Try not to move it while it is writing or reading data. Similar to a cd walk-man if your jogging and listening to the cd it can bump the disc into the internals while it's spinning and damage the disc. The tollerances inside the drive are very tight. It is possible to scratch the platters while they're spinning.
Bottom line if you're worried about it failing make hard copies to disc or get a new external. When chosing a new one look for a model that you can replace the drive. Your current one might be replaceable too. Check your documentation or manufacturers web site. One more idea. Some web services offer online back ups. All ways better safe than sorry. Best of luck.