Harddisk lifetime?

[Rebel 304]

Hello everybody,

what is it about the lifetime manufactures claim, like IBM with 333hours/month for their harddisk or Maxtor with about 700hours/monnth.

Are today's harddisks that fragile? :confused:

Isn't that a wrong trend?


Excuse my english...:)

[Player0]

Well, when manufacturer post mean lifetime numbers like that, its usually to cover their butts. So if you buy their drive and three years later you bring it back, they can point to this little number and tell you that you used your drive to much.

Realistically, unless you have a truely defective drive, it will probably last about 3-5 years easy. Maybe only 3 years if its in a server thats 24/7, 5 years under normal use. Some drives will last much longer, heck I have functioning drives over 10 years old.

Manufacturers don't know how long a drive a last because they are very mechanical, and prone to minor damage from bangs and such. If your kind to it, and its not defective, you'll get 5 years out of it.

If you make routine backups, then you don't have to worry too much about how long your drive will last.

[Surgeon General]

My brother's 40 gig IBM has gone dead twice in the past year. He is soooo glad he got the performance guarantee :D . Makes it easy to just return it to the store and get a new one that same day.
On the other hand my much cheaper maxtors, quantum and seagates have been going 20 hours a day for about 2 years with no problems;)

[speculative]

Originally posted by Surgeon General
My brother's 40 gig IBM has gone dead twice in the past year. He is soooo glad he got the performance guarantee :D . Makes it easy to just return it to the store and get a new one that same day.
On the other hand my much cheaper maxtors, quantum and seagates have been going 20 hours a day for about 2 years with no problems;)

:D I have a Quantum Fireball that I have repeatedly banged against the side of the case (not on purpose of course, all in the line of :2guns: ) and last I checked it still functioned just fine. I think the IBM's that everyone had trouble with were just "too fancy." ;) I'm gonna go for a nice cheap Maxtor next time!

-spec

[tripodal]

i bought the maxtor 160g 5400 rpm beasty 6months ago .. its been on since with nary a hiccup... ( although by the time it hiccups once its already too late.)
in my server case... its probably had a total of 2 hrs downtime

[mdzcpa]

First off...welcome to Liquid Ninjas tripodal :)

I've had a pair of 7200 40G Maxtors in RAID 0 running 24/7 for about a 2 years now without issue. They where the first drives I put into RAID 0 on my old Abit KA7 and then carried over to the KT7A, KG7, KR7A, and now KX7. During that time they've been through countless reformats, defrags, and benching....not to mention overclocked most of the time too. Maxtors run great for me :)

[WesM63]

hmm never like maxtor much... i'am a westren digital guy. My 20gig has been runnin for about 1 1/2yrs without a prob.. not quite 24/7 but close.

I was inspired by some the computers at school we use.. 2.1 wd hdd 's that's ran there hole life never even been defraged or anything.

[Player0]

I gotta agree with Wes here, I don't much care for Maxtor either. Ive seen too many of the older ones just die.

[tripodal]

Well then I will probably be freaking out. Hopefully the fact im running at 5400 rpm will give me added life... or rather a later failure. its gonna take forever to back up 160g......