hard drive failure rate

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter D.
  • Start date Start date
hi again
thank you all who responded to my post
it's time to summarize your comments as this topic is about to be removed
from live discussions
well, i read every response and it seems to me that newer models do tend to
fail more frequently than old ones. what this means to me is that it is more
reliable to install 2 hard drives, say, 10 gigs each than one - 20 gig drive

cheers, peter
 
Peter said:
lol,
cheap joke
but i'm more interested in what percentage of drives fail before they are
10...15 yrs old

peter
Click to expand...

Peter, I can't imagine that there are (m)any that are still in
use after 10-15 years. Back then the home PC's used MFM drives
that were obsoleted long ago.

I would guess that the drives from the major manufactures today
will last until they are replaced by bigger and faster ones.
I know I gave drives here that have outlived the fans and
motherboards in my systems.

-Jim :-)
 
Peter said:
lol,
cheap joke
but i'm more interested in what percentage of drives fail before
they are 10...15 yrs old
Click to expand...

Check the manufacturer's MTBF (mean time before failure) rating. I've seen
such as 500,000 hours. Seems rather optimistic to me.

Here too, watch wrap...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=hard+drive+mtbf&btnG=
Google+Search


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dadiOH
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Check the manufacturer's MTBF (mean time before failure) rating. I've seen
such as 500,000 hours. Seems rather optimistic to me.
Click to expand...

500,000 hours!!! That must be *Mean Time Before a Frickin' meteorite hits
it" :)

Bob

Remove "kins" from address to reply.
 
Bob said:
Dell does not (and never did) manufacture HDD's. They use whichever HDD they
get the best buy on in mass quantities. The HDD's are not even made
specially for Dell. They are off the rack units just like you buy from
NewEgg or Frey's.

It's interesting that all of Dell's components are fine and compatible
except for their cases, motherboards, and cables, which are their own
designs.

Bob

Remove "kins" from address to reply.
Click to expand...

I knew Dell uses vendor parts. Possibly a Western Digital HD selling in
volume to Dell today for $30 is not the quality of a few years ago when
the price might have been more. That was really my question.

Mike Sa
 
ms said:
I knew Dell uses vendor parts. Possibly a Western Digital HD
selling in volume to Dell today for $30 is not the quality of a few
years ago when the price might have been more. That was really my
question.

Mike Sa
Click to expand...

They make up the loss by volume. Like the government. :)

--
dadiOH
_____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.0...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
____________________________
 
lol,
cheap joke
but i'm more interested in what percentage of drives fail before they are
10...15 yrs old

peter
Click to expand...

Hard drives don't have a lifespan much longer than five years.
It's not that they all wear out before then, but they become too
small, relative to newer hard drives that come onto the market,
and they are taken out and put on the shelf to father dust. I've
still got the 420 meg drive that came with my last computer, ten
years ago. It worked when I took it out of the box, but it hasn't
run in five years.
 
Al Smith said:
Hard drives don't have a lifespan much longer than five years.
It's not that they all wear out before then, but they become too
small, relative to newer hard drives that come onto the market,
and they are taken out and put on the shelf to father dust. I've
still got the 420 meg drive that came with my last computer, ten
years ago. It worked when I took it out of the box, but it hasn't
run in five years.
Click to expand...

After 5 years / 50,000 hours a drive is 5% or less of a new drive
Odds are very good a new drive will last 5 years, after which it is just
using up space.
Drives cost $9 a year to run, but a 5 year old drive is worth $5,
and slow, hardly worth seeing if it still works.

The mtbf is a mean, got by mathemagical cherrypicking from a batch.
If few drives fail in the short test period the design may have a 114 year
1million hour MTBF (1M), even if all are designed to turn to dust in 1 year.

Duty cycle also matters, 1 startup/shutdown is taken, rule of thumb,
to be worth 10 hours off life, so leaving it spinning all night is as
dangerous and costly as turning it off. On the other hand power saving
won't affect the 5 year useby date.

WIth 1,000 1M drives odds are 99.985% at least one will fail in a year.
With 100 you could reasonably plan on one will fail in a year,
after all the lemons drop off in the first month.

So which one do you have? The Methuselah or the lemon? No way
of knowing, if no errors use it, if any errors then junk it.

Digital electronics, it works perfectly or not at all.
 
500,000 hours!!! That must be *Mean Time Before a Frickin' meteorite hits
it" :)
Click to expand...
Most I've seen are 50,000 hours which is just over five years. That
seems more realistic than 57+ years.
 
David Simpson said:
Most I've seen are 50,000 hours which is just over five years. That
seems more realistic than 57+ years.
Click to expand...


50,000 hrs mtbf was typical in early 90's, which meant there was a
good chance a given drive would work reliably for at least 2 years.
Any manufacturer which had a lot of drives fail before 2 years
lost a lot of market share.
Many now claim 500,000 , so 5 years is a good bet on a new drive
, which is beyond the time you could reasonably expect to use it.
A new drive is proportionately about 1/4 the price of 5 years ago
for a drive 20 times larger and 2-3x faster.
Indications are drives will continue this way for at least another 5 years
by which time hopefully the solid state terabyte arrays will be in place ;-)
No such a leap.
We can now read and write a few gigabytes to a $2 DVD in far less time than
it takes to format and verify a 14 year old 40Meg drive that cost $400 then.
 
Terry Russell said:
50,000 hrs mtbf was typical in early 90's, which meant there was a
good chance a given drive would work reliably for at least 2 years.
Any manufacturer which had a lot of drives fail before 2 years
lost a lot of market share.
Many now claim 500,000 , so 5 years is a good bet on a new drive
, which is beyond the time you could reasonably expect to use it.
A new drive is proportionately about 1/4 the price of 5 years ago
for a drive 20 times larger and 2-3x faster.
Indications are drives will continue this way for at least another 5 years
by which time hopefully the solid state terabyte arrays will be in place ;-)
No such a leap.
We can now read and write a few gigabytes to a $2 DVD in far less time than
it takes to format and verify a 14 year old 40Meg drive that cost $400 then.
Click to expand...

Whatever the case....... this lightbulb has been burning for over 100 years:

http://www.centennialbulb.org/facts.htm

I'm kinda' glad now that the rocks we threw at it when we were kids back in
the early 1960's missed. Before all the publicity it was outside. I suppose
the rocks piling up around it led 'em to move it inside.
 
I'm probably not adding much here because I can't recall the source;
*possibly* the IEEEs Computer Society magazine. Anyway, somebody
quoted the industry failure rates, and certain models of IBM and
Hitachi drives were much higher than the industry overall. You might
do a Google on "hard drive failure rates".

Personally, I have lost a Maxtor 40 GB within the last 2 years and a
Samsung 15GB just before that. The 40 failed in service and I lost a
lot of files. I ran Maxtor's diagnostic program (required before
returns) and it failed that series of tests. Interestingly, that 40 GB
Maxtor came with a 5 year warranty, so I can get it replaced or
whatever. I've also lost a 20 GB Maxtor. Come to think of it, both
the 20 and 40 were co-branded C***USA (with rebates) on the red
container box.

I am currently using a 120 GB Western Digital (Circuit City rebate)
and an 80 GB Maxtor (Office Max rebate) in my primary Frankenstein PC
(knock on wood).
 
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