Is it true that hard drives are usually worn out after 3 years?

Question

I was at a computer store, and the guy told me i should back up my hard drive because its over 3 years old, and could go out at any time. Is this true, or was he just trying to make a sell?

Answer 1

It is a good idea to back up your hard drive *however* old it is doesnt matter if its brand spanking new, you can never predict how long a hard drive will live, but to put the fear of god in you just because your hard drive is three years old is just hard sell.

Hard drives especially new hard drives tend to be more robust- they also include features such as smart (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) which will warn you if the disk is likely to fail. The smart utility on hard drives can only detect about 70 percent of likely failures. It might not seem that smart but it is seventy times better than 0 percent. Even if your hard drive is 3 years old there is a good chance it will have smart built in.

You can download the corresponding smart tool from the hard drives vendor, for example ibm/hitachi uses a tool called Drive Fitness, seagate uses SeaTools, western digital uses Data Lifeguard etc - you may have to enable smart through the bios to turn it on.

Usually you know if your hard drive is on its way out - repeated blue screens with error codes relating to hardware errors, or if windows starts to report write failures to the disk you should pay careful attention, or even the simple case of the hard drive becoming noiser than normal, or making heavy scratching noises during disk access that it never did before are all pointers that the disk may be on its way out.

Until these things start to happen though, and you have a good backup of important data then I wouldnt worry too much about your drive dying or having to replace your old hard drive (unless of course your running out of space in which case you'll need to look at adding or replacing the hard drive to fit in with your space requirements).

Merry Christmas and Seasonal Greetings!!

Answer 2

the length of the manufactures warranty is a good indication of how long a drive should last. the frequency of use will also greatly effect how long a drive will last. a hard drive used in a system where the user only checks email several times a week will obviously last longer than a hard drive in a system where the user is constantly downloading large files, etc. on a daily basis.

hard drives are rather temperamental they follow a pattern where they have a high failure rate in the beginning of the hard drives life, then a period of normal operation and as the life of the drives comes to an end there will be more errors, problems, etc.

Heat and vibration are hard drive killers so keeping your system cool and your hard drives stable when they are in operation will help to extend the life. That being said, a hard drive that rotates at 10,000 RPM's "should" fail before a drive that rotates at 7,500 RPM's if they were both used under identical circumstances.

Answer 3

Most computer parts have a limited life time. I don't remember exactly but I think it is called MTBF. The idea is that the product should last a certain time before failure.
In my job I saw hard drives crashing quite often at a certain period. And I will scare you when I tell you that they crashed before the 3 years. They were quite new. The guy was wrong : he should have told you that YOU MUST MAKE A BACKUP AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. Your hard disk can crash when you install it in your machine, or 3 weeks later or 3 years later or 10 years later. But normally, the older the hard disk is the more it is likely that it will crash. But it's true that after 3 years a computer is getting old and after 5 years it is very old.

Answer 4

In general, a hard drive's life before danger starts to rise is about 5 years. Many drives outlive that expectancy, but some don't. I actually had my hard drive go bad a month ago, it was around 5 years old.

The salesman could also be talking about warranty life if you get the 3 year plan.

Answer 5

If you leave your computer on 24x7 that may be true. To add life to your hard drive, shut your computer down when not in use. The reason he may be saying this because new technology supplants itself every 18 months to 3 years. Plus the size of hard drives increases dramatically and the need for more storage space increases equally every 3 years.

Answer 6

Absolutely not. I know a dozen people that have HDDs that are ten years old without a bad sector. However, I've heard tell there's a life expectancy factored into the things and it's usually addressed in the user's manual or corporate website, i.e., Seagate, Western Digital, etc.

Answer 7

It depends on whether you leave the drive constantly on, what brand the drive is, and probably where you live. If you lived in a humid environment, it would most likely shorten the life of your drive by a little bit.

Answer 8

not really,but it is better to back up your hard drive.