?? - Life span of a hard drive???

dee1949

...I leave my ole trusty Dell GX270 desktop on 24/7. It has Win XP on it. The drive has worked flawlessly for 5 or so years. I always backup my personal files. Have a backup pc with much better specs....that I am constantly updating....but the GX270 refuses to die. It is a familiar ole friend. Still has the original WD 40gb Hard drive in it. I use the 40gb for programs and such. I have separate drives for media.

...Now why is the original 40 gb drive still in operation? It is on 24/7. One of my media SATA drive....loaded with movies is dying. Whirring sounds...wouldn't start up. I filled it to capacity....now when scandick runs...it says no room to repair or such. Are the older drive made better? What is best back up system for media?

..Over 60 - RETIRED - and constantly learning.

Clipdat

While the quality of hard drives does tend to vary slightly from manufacturer to manufacturer, there's no real rhyme or reason as to why one drive might fail and another might run for years and years. Sadly, that is just the nature of the product. You have to just assume that a drive can and will fail at any time without warning. Best is to do what you do and keep regular backups, "just in case". Alas, even as I say that I'm guilty of not backing up as frequently as I should.

My brand loyalty tends to be with Western Digital. I've had really good luck with their "Green" series of drives, and use a "Black" series for my primary/OS drive due to the increased speed. The Greens really are fantastic for media storage and playback though.

There are some things than contribute to premature drive failure though. Excessive physical shock, vibration, and heat are the three that come to mind. Some people say that you should not be running a subwoofer in close proximity to your PC due to the vibrations, but I've never had an issue with this. For heat I recommend a PC enclosure that has a fan in front of the drive bay so that they can be actively cooled. This is especially important if you are planning on mounting multiple drives on top of one another.

Regarding your drive, the whirring sounds make it seem like some sort of mechanical failure. But then you mention scandisk not being able to run because of lack of storage space. This is an interesting observation and one of the reasons why you really don't want to ever fill a drive to it's complete capacity. I recommend keeping at least 10-15% free space on a drive.

Syndil

Doesn't matter the brand, they will all fail eventually. Why some sooner than others? Luck, perhaps karma... Pick your answer.

sucks2beme

I've had voicemail system hard drives run 10 years running 24/7. But if you ever power them down long enough to cool off,
it will be all over but the crying.

Sherardp

Eventually they all fail at some point. Some of the newer models fail because they have more moving parts especially the larger ones. When that 40gb does go out on you, look into a SSD hard drive and prepare to be blown away.

mdaudioguy

dee1949 wrote: »

?? - Life span of a hard drive???

Usually something less than what I've planned for!! :redface:

nadams

Running 24x7 is easier on a hard drive than constant starts and stops. The WD 40gb drives that were in the GX270's were pretty reliable, albeit very slow by today's standards. I have a box of them at work that I've pulled and upgraded, just because of the speed. Anymore, though, I don't invest the money in them.