How Long Does a Hard Drive Last?

⏱️ A hard drive can last a long time, but it's important to realize that they could still fail at any moment.

HDD lifespan
Traditional spinning magnetic-platter hard drives can last for many years, as reported in data center studies. While failure rates do increase over time, they remain relatively low during the useful life of the computer containing the drive. Regardless of the expected lifespan, it’s critical to assume it’ll fail at any time and be prepared with backups, so as not to lose any data.

Chapters
0:00 How Long Does a Hard Drive Last?
1:10 Anything can die at any time
2:04 HDD life expectancy
3:12 Pragmatic life expectancy
4:30 SSDs are different

More Ask Leo!

#askleo #harddrive #lifespan

[askleonotenboom]

A long time . . . usually. There's one BIG catch.

[bororidley]

I would say replace the HDD drive every 5-10 years, rather than risk a failure. Because when a HDD fails it is always when you need something off of it. Also you can keep the old drive and use it as a back up drive for you new data.

[ronaldgarrison]

There's how long the drive lasts, and then there's how long the data on the drive lasts, without being refreshed. Those can be radically different things, for both hard drives and solid state. My most relevant information is that, about five years ago, I had (and still have) a collection of about 300-400 GB, in five places, one of which was an internal hard drive. That copy was the oldest. It had been there for fully NINE years, without being refreshed. I was cautiously optimistic that the drive would still work all right, as it had been accessed briefly about three years before with no trouble. But that data, sitting there for 9 years without a refresh…I was prepared for the worst.

There were NO errors. I have MD5 checksums on everything, and every single one checked out. It's been five years since that time, and it's about time for another refresh. But I'm hopeful it will still be all right. Still, I keep multiple copies of everything, just in case.

In my experience, data is at much more risk from your fingers, doing the wrong operations in software, than from any hardware failure. I've had just one hard drive failure, in my own equipment, in almost 40 years and maybe involving a dozen drives. That drive was used a lot. No idea why it went bad. Other than that, no problem. But despite lots of care taken, I've had many data mishaps. But no significant loss of data, other than very, very early on, in 1984, a month or two after starting work with PCs, some long-forgotten mishap with a 360 K floppy.

So while you should back up your data with extreme diligence, it's more for software reasons that hardware failure.

The worst data mishap I ever had probably is what happened in 1999, with Excel. Not actual data loss, but I selected a whole bunch of sheets, then did some editing, only to find that those edits were applied to ALL selected sheets. I hold grudges against programs. Major ones. That's one of them.

[rontarrant]

I have an old 320gb drive here that CrystalDiskInfo claims to have 1, 428, 911 Power On Hours... that's 163 years! I don't believe it because I know for a fact they didn't make hard drives that big back then. :)

[glasslinger]

The HD in my security system has been running 24-7 for right at 3 years now, still recording fine!

[eminusipi]

I've had a few Western Digital hard drives well over 10 years with no failures. Can't say the same for Seagate drives. They seem to fail after only a few years, both internal and external USB drives.

[jonathanrees]

I have seen drives running in Servers for more than 20 years - yes Server 2000 and 2003 (even NT 4) are still being used. From work I did a very long time ago related to "environmental stress testing" electronics has 2 peaks of failure, during the first 3 months - then at about 18 months. Failures are caused by bad soldering, bad components and/or static damage. Soldering and static damage can take years to show up, electron microscopes can show static damage - sometimes just half a conductor blown out. Mechanical drives are subject to these failures plus moving parts wearing out, breaking. Data can sometimes be retrieved from a drive with seized or sticking bearings by rocking the drive back and forth in the plane of rotation - gets the platters spinning. Mechanical shock can kill a drive instantly. Know of 1 case where a datacentre had a gas fire suppression system discharge - system had wrong nozzles - acoustic shock killed all the drives in the centre. Back in the eighties a friend of mine had a scratch disk he was using, cover off, hand spin the platters to get them started - then worked OK, and this lasted a number of years.

[zeal]

I have a 1 TB 7200 HDD I bought in 2009, and a 5TB 7200 HDD I bought in 2015, still going strong!

In fact, my SSD from 2009/2010, died in 2015.

[DigitalLobstershow]

i using a 6TB Westen digital from 2019 it goes on and off everyday for 12 hours and works perfect.
but i always replace my Hard Disk every 5 years.

[NoEggu]

Tips for a long lasting hard drive:

1) Make sure that you have proper cooling. Heat kills.
A light breeze should be enough.

If an internal drive is in a case with a non-working fan, that can shorten the life of your hard drive.
If an external drive is in a hot room, you should turn on a fan, and direct it at the drive. As long as a light breeze blows the drive's hot air away, you should be in good shape.

2) Never turn off the drive. If you leave it running 24/7/365, it will probably last longer. Of course, you will be paying for the electricity to keep it running 24/7/365.
Your hard drive takes the most punishment when it is turned on.

The above might be a tad difficult, because some drives go into power-saver mode, and have no option to disable it.

3) Feed your computer and hard drive (if it is external and not in the computer's case)... feed them clean power. Never connect your computer equipment directly to your wall outlet. That is dirty power. Every time anything bad happens on the power grid, your computer will be exposed to that event. Over time, even little spikes take their toll. Also, low voltages are bad.

If you ever have a black-out, unplug everything. The worst power is when a black-out ends, and the power is restored. Wait 5 or 10 minutes before plugging things back in.

If you use a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), your computer (and anything else plugged into the UPS) should last a very long time.

Not all UPS's are the same. A cheap one is basically a bucket of batteries that kicks in when there is a blackout. That is better than nothing.

The next step up is a UPS with AVR (automatic voltage regulation). Such UPS's will boost low voltage situations, and will reduce high voltage situations. Such UPS's will generally have a better joule rating (how much of a surge it can absorb and keep it from hitting your computer).

High end UPS's are referred to as "on-line". This is because they actively convert your A/C power to D/C power, and then back to A/C power (a double conversion). This means that the UPS is generating its own power. As such, whatever you have plugged in to the UPS will never see anything from the power grid. Such UPS's are expensive, and consume electricity in order to do the double conversion. This would probably be overkill for most people.

Data centers (such as a google, facebook, etc) use on-line UPS's to protect their huge server rooms (hospital operating rooms, too). Those UPS's, along with pallets and pallets of batteries, might cost more than your house.

If you are using a power strip with surge suppression, that is probably not doing much. The part that does the suppression is a metal-oxide varistor (MOV). Most power strips have cheap MOVs, and they wear out. Each little hit that they absorb takes a bite out of the MOV. As time passes, your surge suppression stops, and you will have only a power strip (and you will not know that the strip is no longer suppressing spikes and surges).

A good UPS, with AVR, will go a long way in protecting whatever you have plugged into it. And they will not break the bank.
I have been using them for 25 years, for TVs, computers, and all other electronics, and have never had any equipment (that is plugged into the UPS) fail.

[MaddogGT]

I have three Seagate BC and they are over 5 years old, still good so far. That said, I have a old WD drive in my Sateliite PVR. Its been running for 17 years 24/hrs a day and still good. Before that it was in a PC for 4 years....

[patmat.]

Use industry grade 3.5" drive, in dry cool env., and don't shake them, would be my 3 advices to make them last longer than we will.

[oronjoffe]

An excellent video, as usual, Leo! There are actually statistics about HDD life expectancy although they are usually based on data centre use. Google have published such stats before and Cloudflare publish figures annually. It’s difficult to give an exact answer as the figures depend on drive model and pattern of use, but IT admins usually assume around 3% in the first year (that “infant mortality” Leo mentions), then about 1% in the second year and a gradual climb to 3% in years 3 &4. Thereafter the risk goes a little higher but there is no definite figure for disks snuffing it. I have seen and used 15 years old drives and even older which were still functioning just fine, but generally anything over 10 is living on borrowed time. If possible, I would recommend replacing primary drives (that is, the ones built into computers) preventatively at 5-6 years. Backup drives which are only used occasionally and are not critical in any case can be used for longer.
Just remember, eventually, something will give. The insulation around wires may perish, the oil in the motor may gum up, a screw or bushing may work loose. It’s better to deal with the replacement on your terms rather than to find out how long it took before the disaster occurred!

[imaxjunior]

My windows7 HD just died - 10years old. It was timely as i made the jump to Win11. The last backup i made came over no problem. Your computer info is the Best.

[hobbyelectronics]

Hard drives used to outlast computers, but my current machine is 8 years old 32k hours on the HD. I can't type / read or watch video any faster than I could 8 years ago. I'm not a gamer or a video maker, so my requirements really haven't changed much over the years. It looks like I will run this machine until the motherboard/cpu quits. I'm on my third power supply.
Multiple backups are the best peace of mind you can have regardless of the age or type of drives.

[FermiToll]

OMG my experience is as you mention! I had HDDs, i had bad luck with some and failed in months or over a year and others never (but as you describe passing that threshold I never thought on that) work years and years, i even change my PC and the HDD is still working.

[pgplaysvidya]

this is a good point i sort of forgot when look up drive lifespan. while the SSD / boot drive will probably never need to get bigger, eventually my hard drives will need to be larger than 10TB - what happens then is I decommission the old drive and buy two (Backups) larger capacity drives.

for the boot drive, it ought to last long enough that a replacement drive is not expensive. how much are 500 GB sata SSDs anyway? 50 bucks?

plus if you keep backups, the odds of you catastrophically losing everything becomes lower and lower. having two backups, one off site, is the best option.

[wilhelmtaylor]

For me the question is: What is the shelf life of a hard drive that's only rarely used for backup?

[glazz]

To think my portable hardrive lasted 7 years I usually use it once every month just to check if its still working and that one time each month is also when I try to transfer some of my data from my PC

[dave-]

Always pays to have multiple copies of anything important. There are drives from the 80s that still work error free, but I wouldn’t suggest relying on a harddrive for 40 years. Dvd and cd are at risk of disc rot. Best practice is to have backups on different media, and make additional backups as they age if that information is important to you.