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How long do hard drives actually live for?

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Stoic Joker:
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.
-40hz (November 14, 2013, 02:22 PM)
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I'll second the voodoo science/trust your instincts (e.g. don't ignore that funny feeling) angle, as it has server me well in the past (and bit me a few time when ignored).

Here's one (along those lines) that happened yesterday. Client has a computer lab with 15 machines, that were all (old) donated boxes because they are a nonprofit outfit. They let another group user their lab for a training session, and after the session, the folks then shutdown the machines to be considerate. The machines were supposed to be left on for the nightly maintenance routines to run ... so that hadn't actually been off for about 6 months.

The next morning - after finally cooling completely overnight - 7 of the 15 machines were completely - hardware failure - dead. 3 HDDs, 2 motherboards, 1 question mark, and we're pretty sure the last one is a zombie because it should have been dead months ago given how flakey it acts.

40hz:
The next morning - after finally cooling completely overnight - 7 of the 15 machines were completely - hardware failure - dead.
-Stoic Joker (November 15, 2013, 07:33 AM)
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Sounds like they built up some serious condensation overnight. Especially if this noon-profit throttles down the AC (or shuts it off) to save on power when nobody's around. Turn an older PC on when that happens and **POP**

Similar to the printer 'service issues' we used to get with some clients during the summer. Invariably after a 3-day weekend. Their landlords would seriously cut back on the building's AC over long weekends, and that extra day of increased humidity would make the paper in the printer bulk up. Tuesday morning our phone would be ringing off the hook with service calls for continuous paper jams. We tried telling them to just remove the paper that was in the tray and load a fresh unopened ream. But NO...they wanted it checked.

You know the type:


I want them to get their asses in here - and I want it NOW!



Picked up a lot of 'routine maintenance' service trips that way. Quick $75 half-hour invoice.

Except in cases where some irate yahoo decided to forcefully rip some jammed sheets out of a printer, and not power off first to disengage the drive mechanism. Those service trips were much more...um...profitable.

At least for us. ;) :Thmbsup:

IainB:
... 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
-40hz (November 14, 2013, 02:22 PM)
--- End quote ---
Well, there is worry based on ignorance and worry based on evidence. I'd go for the latter every time, which is when I find HD Sentinel so useful.

40hz:
^Hunch, vibe, or utility - whatever works best for you since it's your data.  ;D

FWIW there are bad vibes and then there's bad vibes. If you do this stuff for a living the vibes you get (which are really more the product of semi-subconscious observation and analysis linked to a deal of real world working experience) are significantly different than what the average computer user likely feels when they get them. And athough we jokingly refer to it as getting a vibe or having a hunch, it's actually a lot more than that.  

Oh yes, we almost always try to confirm it with a test utility before we take action on what we're intuiting too.  :Thmbsup:


Yeah...it was that Adtran I had a
bad feeling about yesterday

SeraphimLabs:
SSDs have come a very long way though. I've begun deploying SSD based workstations where I work because of their speed, in workstations designed for 3 years of service before being repurposed. The MTBF of the devices I am using is comparable to a conventional drive, and should at least make that first 3 years problem-free, while their actual use is such that if one does die prematurely I can have it running again off a spare drive in a couple of hours. After the three years it will be interesting to see how they age.

At the same time, my oldest working system has been running very nearly 24/7 for the past 8 years, and is still operating the very same hard drives that it has had the whole time- one of which is actually more than 12 years old and still going strong after being given to me because it was 'dead'.

Sure they don't all last that long, gotta run the statistics. But those that do survive a few years often go for a very long time afterward, it's not like a SSD where it will suddenly lose its ability to accept new data due to accumulated wear.

Also it has been a strange month for the electronics. I've had no less than 4 video hardware related failures in November alone, after going many years without ever losing a video card in active service. A workstation that gets powered off every night also turned up one morning with a dead mainboard as well, I've not had that happen in a while either.

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