A question about hard drives I've always wanted to know...

That depends on how you use your hard drive. So, there is no such a certain time.

I see. Most of the time, my drive is in use 12 hours every day, always being shut off at night. I pretty much just surf the net with my computers...don't really do anything strenuous with them. For what it's worth, the drive is a Hitachi 250 gb. It's super quiet and doesn't give me any reason to think it's bad, but what do I know?

I've never heard of a hard drive slowing down with age. Windows can slow down over time, as you accumulate junk and temporary files on it, but the hard drive usually runs util it begins to fail.

If your hard drive and BIOS support it, you can run a program to monitor SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) parameters, which would tell you when the drive is ready to fail. SMART monitors things like the drive's spin-up time, drive temperature, read and write errors, etc. I've used Active Hard Disk Monitor in the past, when it was free, but it doesn't seem to be free any longer. But you can use it for a 14-day trial period to see if there's anything wrong with your drive. Provided your old drive supports the generation and collection of SMART data.

http://www.ntfs.com/disk-monitor.htm

Thanks, I'm glad to know that age isn't necessarily a factor. Unfortunately, I run Linux on that comp, and Linux doesn't support ANYTHING  

with old drives most times when they start slowing down is do to the heads and spindle hitting the drive platter...you start hearing a tick tick or buzzzing sound. or the drive lube goes bad or dries up. when it goes bad..thickens..when a drive is off and cools down it may not spin up on the first power cycle (sticknation). or the lube drys out and the drive sound like a lawn mower.
the thing that happens most with old drives is the drive controller will just fail. no spin or 30 sec spin up and then spin down.
there nothing wrong with using old drive just make sure you do a back up of your data. if the drive does die on you you wont lose much.

Thanks, I didn't know that about larger drives being faster. I should have been more specific when I said there isn't anything available for Linux; there's lots of stuff available (like those drive tools), but you have to run terminal to use them, which I refuse to do.

Thanks for the answers everyone!

Best answer selected by 9xer.