FYI - Hard drive price hikes

[John]

It's not so much age as use.

A HDD that has been sat near idle for 5 years may last another 5 years no problem. One that is a boot drive on a server that doesn't have enough RAM so is getting thrashed 24x7 may last less than 12 months.

As mechanical devices, they wear out

My oldest data centre was opened in 2000. There are servers that we put in on day one that have never seen a HDD failure. Likewise I have seen drives fail in the first few weeks.

But last year I spent some time with Google and they have so many drives and such control over tens of thousands of drives that they can tell you which drive is going to fail next to a level of accuracy that is incredible.

Often this is down to information based on batch etc.

That's my point - age is one factor.

Environmental factors also have a bearing as well as use.

For example, drives in a tougher environment seem to be more likely to fail. Drives which get too hot and drives which are subject to shock seem to be more likely to go.

I happily replace hard drives in PCs with ones from other computers which have been scrapped or died (for other reasons than hard drive failure of course - any whiff a hard disk is dodgy and it's "oot"), and they can live on without issue. One shouldn't suddenly be more concerned as a result.

The bottom line is, it is a lottery to some extent and provision for backing up should be made no matter what storage medium is used, as they are ALL subject to failure (or disaster / theft etc.).

 

[neilz]

I do use a very old tape drive for backup (Travan TR-5 format), they're hardly prone to failure if stored properly and the drive isn't used too often as the content on the sites rarely changes so it has had light use

 

[John]

Travan TR-5 format

Travan takes me back to the mid-90s!

 

[neilz]

It's even older than the "server"!

I used a Dell Dimension XPS T450 | PCWorld as a server until 2 years ago and the drive came with it. It's now looking rather out of place in my Tiny desktop which I host sites with!

 

[BTB 500]

We used to run backups to Bernoulli drives

 

[neilz]

Well, I do still use ZIPs every now and then! Computers write to them far quicker than to CDs and some PCs don't seem to like my USB memory stick

 

[John]

Remember Jumbo 120MB tape streamers connected as a floppy drive?

Lol.

 

[Spinal]

Do you have a backup car?

Old doesn't mean more prone to failure...

I've had the SMART status monitored (apparently) and they're at or above 98% health.

I do - in fact, I have something like 8 cars (losing count... sigh...)

Age itself isn't the key factor, my post said "after 3-5 years of use" - not just 3-5 years.

M.

 

[Sp!ke]

From my experience, HDD's are so unreliable that I would replace it each time the PC needed to be rebuilt instinctively. (when they are at normal price points that is).

Little 2.5" or worse still the 1.8" notebook drives are just disasters waiting to happen.

If you dont want to ever lose your precious family photo's then for gods sake back up and do it often.

 

[neilz]

Laptop hard drives never last long with me (I have one from '97 in my Toshiba Satellite still going strong but my newish Dell's went in a year, as did my IBM T60's)

Old desktop ones feel they were built like blocks of steel (rather like my newest camera acquisition - a Zenit 12XP in need of TLC) and all last much longer than the newer somehow lighter ones.

 

[Spinal]

Laptop hard drives never last long with me (I have one from '97 in my Toshiba Satellite still going strong but my newish Dell's went in a year, as did my IBM T60's)

Old desktop ones feel they were built like blocks of steel (rather like my newest camera acquisition - a Zenit 12XP in need of TLC) and all last much longer than the newer somehow lighter ones.

Pretty close... most desktop drives (the case at least) were either die-cast aluminium or CNC'ed aluminium

M.

 

[neilz]

But the old ones are quite loud. And I have a FUjitsu Ergopro from '96 I got unused las year. Only started it up half a dozen times, the HDD takes 5 seconds to spin up!

 

[BTB 500]

Hmm ... I've been using PCs since the early 80s and have never had a hard drive fail. Must have been lucky I guess!

 

[@MARK]

Hmm ... I've been using PCs since the early 80s and have never had a hard drive fail. Must have been lucky I guess!

Very

Oddly the only drives I have ever have fail at home have all been Western Digital

 

[John]

I only ever choose to buy WD, so not a surprise my only drive to fail was one of those - in 20 years of using them.