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How long do hard drives actually live for?

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40hz:
One key question that is a little closer to being answers is one I raised in my post "Should we preemptively retire old hard drives".  This latest article would seem to suggest that after a few years, the rate of failure seems to start increasing, and it really might be a good idea to preemptively replace drives that are 4-5 years old, rather than to assume that a long-lasting drive is something special that will run forever.
-mouser (November 14, 2013, 09:19 AM)
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I'll agree to proactive replacement as long as it's not based strictly on age. I've actually seen more early catastrophic drive failures (1 to 3 months into their service life) than I've seen unexpected failure with drives that have been in service for three to five (or more) years. Like the saying goes, most electronic failures occur very early or very late in life. Electronics hardly ever fail during their midlife.

For a rule of thumb I'd say proactive replacement is best done whenever you start getting that nagging feeling something is wonky with a drive - or when you migrate to a new server or workstation. NEVER recycle mission critical mechanical parts (i.e. HDs) into a new box. Always purchase new drives, and repurpose properly working old ones into less critical roles.

Just my :two: anyway. :)

 :Thmbsup:

sinum:
One online Storage-Provider, using none Server Disks, post his personal stats before some days. As i remember, about 4% fails within 1st 1,5 Years than the fails go down to 1,5% and max lifetime is about 5-6 Years. This means very high risk after 4-5 Years on heavy usage. Maybe someone get this Article again i don't.  :-[

mouser:
most electronic failures occur very early or very late in life. Electronics hardly ever fail during their midlife.
--- End quote ---

yes but wouldn't that support the idea of preemtively decommissing a hard drive after 5 or 6 years, whether its displaying any signs of trouble or not?

needless to say, all of this talk about preemptive decomissioning is predicated on the idea that having a hard drive suddenly die on you is a very bad thing to have happen -- something which is true in most cases.

40hz:
yes but wouldn't that support the idea of preemtively decommissing a hard drive after 5 or 6 years, whether its displaying any signs of trouble or not?
-mouser (November 14, 2013, 02:11 PM)
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Yes, but we're still talking probabilities and distribution curves.

However, if I do understand what you're saying, then yes...it probably wouldn't hurt to replace most drives after 5 years  - although it probably wouldn't absolutely decrease the likelihood of a 'bad surprise' as much as we'd hope. Drives seldom go belly up without at least a few days of sending you an indication that something is going south. At least from my experience they do.

Like I said earlier - if you find yourself worrying about a drive, it's probably a good time to think about a replacement. Those subconscious trouble signals you pick up are often worth paying attention to once you have some experience under your belt.

Not terribly scientific I'm afraid. But it's an approach that's worked well for me. YMMV. ;D

xtabber:
If a drive is 5-6 years old, it is a couple of HD generations old, which means it can be replaced by a drive that uses less power, runs cooler and has higher data transfer rates, to say nothing of costing much less for the same or greater capacity.

I've never replaced a drive preemptively because I was worried about it failing, but I do upgrade drives from time to time. The older drives are then used for off line (e.g., backup) storage.

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