Life Expectancy for a HDD?

[Cellmate]

Hi, all,

I seem to recall the usual lifespan of a hard drive was around 5 years, give or take.

Has that changed?

Will my work pcs (7 yrs old) all begin dying soon? How about the 5 yr old ones?

Thanks,

Cellmate

[viking33]

Hi, all,

I seem to recall the usual lifespan of a hard drive was around 5 years, give or take.

Has that changed?

Will my work pcs (7 yrs old) all begin dying soon? How about the 5 yr old ones?

Thanks,

Cellmate

I don't think you can put the life expectancy of a hard drive in number of years anymore. Modern drives are much more reliable and trouble free than the older types of drives. Amount of usage and "on" time might be a contributing factor but as long as you don't encounter any drive error problems or hear any unusual sounds from the drives, enjoy the longer life span and don't put a time stamp on them and replace them just because they become "golden agers."

i would run chkdsk occasionally to ease any doubts you may have.
An example of this for Win 7 is here:

http://www.w7forums.com/use-chkdsk-check-disk-t448.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Cellmate]

Dang! I was hoping for fodder for an argument with management about how we neeeeeed
new equipment--and SOOOON!!!

Of course, given lie to by the 7 yr old machines

I was wondering if the 7 yr old machines may have come before the improvements in general, but they
are still working.

I haven't looked, (just remembered) part of the specs used to be: MTBF- mean time before failure. Do the manufacturers
still report that?

Thanks,

Cellmate

[JoeP]

This is from 2007 but probably still relevant - Disk drive life depends on . . . luck | ZDNet.

Joe

[StuartR]

The reliability of components such as disk drives typically follows a bathtub curve. The rate of failure is quite high when they are new, because of manufacturing errors and defects. Then they become stable and reliable for a period of time (called service life) and then they become less reliable again.

The service life of a typical disk drive is about 3 to 5 years.

[Cellmate]

Great info!

Thanks, everyone!

Cellmate