Non Linux question about hard drive lifespan

[MintBean]

"Research by Google shows that disk utilization plays a very small factor in a drive’s lifespan over long periods of time." - so it doesn't make a lot of difference. Ensuring the discs are kept cool and avoid physical shocks is the biggest factor.

[Citizen229]

Cant remember what was it 90% full rule to keep seek times down? Above that % seek times can wear a drive down quick.

[MintBean]

Thanks, I thought the writing wore the drive out most. I suppose if I back them up there's no worries anyway.

Solid State Discs die from too many writes.

[Pjotr]

Platter disks are probably designed for a lifespan of 3-5 years....

[Night Wing]

The HP tower computer I'm typing this message on has the original two, 1 TB 7200 rpm platter type Western Digital hard drives that came with this desktop computer I bought brand new in May of 2010. They're both still quiet when working and haven't given me any problems (knock on wood) after 7 years of constant use.

[Jim Hauser]

I have always figured 3 years for replacing a drive but I now have one that is pushing 6 years with no problems. The key, I think, is keeping them cool (35 C right now on my oldest drive) and providing good clean power via UPS. I also have been running my main system 24/7 with very few power downs.

I had figured that my oldest drive would give up several years ago but I am still waiting... When it does go I will be ready.

I do not know if read only will prolong HDD lifespan. The platter motor spins regardless. If you are not sure then it is time to copy...

[mwbworld]

I've always been bemused by the fact that the external HDD I use for back up always seem to die well before the internal main HDD I use. That's in decades of PC use across OSs - apple, windows and now linux. Admittedly I haven't had an HDD die under linux yet but that's only been slightly over a year of being linux on all my home machines.

Behold the unstoppable power of Irony!

[thx-1138]

My previous internal hard drive (WD, 5400rpm, 80gb) lasted 14 years before starting to fail...according to diagnostics, 43500 hrs of works in total approximately.

[InkKnife]

While it is prudent to refresh important drives every about 5 years or so I have to say that in the 30ish years I have been using computers with hard drives I have only had a single drive ever mechanically fail on me and I have seen hundreds of 10 years old PCs running just fine with their original hard drives.
i would imagine HDDs in laptops would last a much shorter amount of time.

[catweazel]

"Research by Google shows that disk utilization plays a very small factor in a drive’s lifespan over long periods of time." - so it doesn't make a lot of difference. Ensuring the discs are kept cool and avoid physical shocks is the biggest factor.

Errant cosmic particles don't help either.

[Faust]

....
Errant cosmic particles don't help either.

Yeah , those neutrinos are a real pest ....
... no mass , no charge , only spin [ a good working definition of most politicians ]

Joking aside , Backblaze have all the best info you could ever want regarding HD lifetimes .
https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html

The last time I looked they had over 60,000 platters spinning , 24/7 , and they publish all of their data !

[lmintnewb2]

Really is no set answer to this, seen it mentioned the rule of thumb would be 3-5 years, as said InkKnife have seen hard drives easily last a decade or much longer, the drive in this second hand ancient Dell Inspiron 1545, is going on a decade and seems to still be going strong. Different operating system platforms are better or worse on hardware, gnu/Linux is known to prolong the life of hardware components vs window$, which I believe is intentionally designed into their OS, to prematurely wear out and require replacement of major system components. Also obviously would have to make a difference in who makes the drive = the quality of the drive and it's manufacturer.

Some brands (ie: Seagate ... according to research findings and opinions of nixers I respect) are known to have a much higher rate of failure or premature failure. Which yeah ... is only common sense, a high quality component, by a high quality manufacturer is almost certainly going to last longer than the opposite. Really don't think there's any way of knowing, outside of research quality brands and relying on quality components. Drives generally have built in diagnostics now, which can be used to assess it's overall health and warn someone of impending drive failure. My general take on it is ... use it until it fails but keeping important data backed up elsewhere is always just a good practice regardless.

[mwbworld]

Errant cosmic particles don't help either.

And let us not neglect the problems caused by local fights between superheroes and supervillains with electro-magnetic sorts of powers!

Can you imagine trying to run a big data center in those conditions?

[catweazel]

Errant cosmic particles don't help either.

And let us not neglect the problems caused by local fights between superheroes and supervillains with electro-magnetic sorts of powers!

Can you imagine trying to run a big data center in those conditions?

It isn't a joke.

[mwbworld]

Errant cosmic particles don't help either.

And let us not neglect the problems caused by local fights between superheroes and supervillains with electro-magnetic sorts of powers!

Can you imagine trying to run a big data center in those conditions?

It isn't a joke.

Yup. I know about that. I'm not thinking that sharing a bit humor is problematic.

[NChewie]

"
Errant cosmic particles don't help either.

A very interesting article.
I wonder if there is a greater impact on certain parts of the earth's surface where the atmosphere is thinner e.g. where there is a hole in the ozone layer?

Are there any stats to compare Australia with the US?

Should/Do data centres have lead lined roofs

[NChewie]

Re the original question... back in the late 80s, hard drives had a lifespan of less than a year in desktops. I went through a few in those days.
I think the introduction of UPS and filtered power supplies helped a lot.

That said, I believe every laptop should be based on SSD, as it is daft to have mechanical drives shaken and banged around while on the road.

[flatiron]

How do you tell if a hard drive or SSD is going out? And how do you add multiple drives such that if one fails the system still works?

[Jim Hauser]

I use GSmart Control on a weekly basis to check my drives overall health. I also monitor the drive temperatures with Conky and keep an ear out for strange noises. It should also be noted that my system is not portable and is never moved.

For the past year I have been using four Seagate HDDs with a striped LVM for my system. I use Redo to make separate backups for each LVM member (4) once per week. I do not know how well a member can be restored to a new (different) drive. I might have to re-create the stripes on each drive if one fails and is replaced. If one drive goes out, the whole system goes down until the drive is replaced and the striped LVM is re-created or restored from backup. I could also stripe only 3 (or 2) drives or use a standard setup on a single drive but striped LVM with less then 4 drives gains no speed benefit on my system.

The key for me is a good backup/restore policy. Once per week all LVM members are backed up with a copy of the backup put on a second drive. I also copy my Home folder manually (twice) to two drives. Virtual Box systems are also dual exported on a regular basis. And just to be safe copies of the backups are put on an offsite drive. The couple of hours per week is well worth it in the long run. For me, restoring (1.5 hours) or re-installing the system (1 day or less) are both good options. I have considered RAID mirroring but have found nothing to suit my needs as of yet.

At the very least I always have two working drives at all times. I have found that is impossible to predict exactly when a drive will fail but it is much easier to prepare for a drive failure.

I have had no experience at all with SSDs at this point in time. I am still researching how well they do and what kind of problems they could have (or what kinds of benefits they could provide.) Call me old if you want but my first hard drive was a 40 megabyte (yes megabyte) LT. Kernal for my C-64. I had to get a bank loan to purchase it and it lasted 5 years.