Tom's Hardware: Topic Old hard drives: how long do they last?
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Just wondering - how long should I expect a hard drive to last? In my last DIY, I got a new HD, but I use my old HDD as a second drive, with dual boot. The 'new' HDD is about 3 years old or so (80GB Western Digital), but the old one is something like 30GB and probably 6 years old or so (and I think it is also a Western Digital, but not sure).
Am I pressing my luck with these? Generally, how long do HDDs last?
I don't do hardly any video/audio downloads (so far), so I am reluctant to buy a new 'low-end' HDD with 1/2 TB 
One of your old hard drives could last another 10 years or it could die tomorrow.
One measure of hard drive reliability is mean time before failure (mtbf). Unfortunately, that is based on some sort of statistical calculations (that I have no freakin' clue about 
).
Case in point: the WD 1 TB RE3 drive has a 1,200,000 hour mtbf. That's about 135 years of continuous operation. I am willing to bet that WD did not design it in the 1870's, build ten of them, run them continuously, have five fail by this year, and so declare a 1.2 million hour mtbf. 
Well all I can tell you that I've got 43mb hard drive from WD from 1991 and it still works. If new drives wont fail after a year of two they should work for long, long, long
| mitofi wrote : Just wondering - how long should I expect a hard drive to last? In my last DIY, I got a new HD, but I use my old HDD as a second drive, with dual boot. The 'new' HDD is about 3 years old or so (80GB Western Digital), but the old one is something like 30GB and probably 6 years old or so (and I think it is also a Western Digital, but not sure).
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| Quote : how long should I expect a hard drive to last? |
I've replaced a couple of older HDs recently that literally 'smothered' to death. One DELL and a HP. Both caes had no intake fan pulling fresh air into the front onto the HD to cool it. Dust accumilation had 'completely' blocked every entry of fresh air behind the front bezel of the cases. Even the CPU on one the HP was so caked the CPU fan was barely keeping it alive. The dust was so thick I had to take the cases outside in the yard to blow them out and clean them. Not the only determing factor, but heat (from dust accumilation and air flow blockage specifically) will definately cause the HD controller to fail and render the drive useless. I have HDs running that are over 10 years old.
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