How Long Do Hard Drives Actually Live For?

[Matsuda]

For more than 30 years, the realm of computing has been intrinsically linked to the humble hard drive. It has been a complex and sometimes torturous relationship, but there’s no denying the huge role that hard drives have played in the growth and popularization of PCs, and more recently in the rapid expansion of online and cloud storage. Given our exceedingly heavy reliance on hard drives, it’s very, very weird that one piece of vital information still eludes us: How long does a hard drive last?

Now, before you all rush to the comments section to tell me how long your hard drives have lasted, I’m not talking anecdotally. I mean, in hard numbers, just how long does the average hard drive last? One year? Three? Five? Because the standard warranty is now only 12 months, do hard drives die sooner? If I slot a new hard drive in today, how long can I expect it to last?

Surprisingly, despite hard drives underpinning almost every aspect of modern computing (until smartphones), no one has ever carried out a study on the longevity of hard drives — or at least, no one has ever published results from such a study. Until now. Backblaze, an unlimited online backup company that keeps 25,000 hard drives spinning at all time, has published its results on hard drive lifespan — and it makes for very interesting reading indeed.

How long does a hard drive last?

Backblaze has kept up to 25,000 hard drives constantly online for the last four years. Every time a drive fails, they note it down, then slot in a replacement. After four years, Backblaze now has some amazing data and graphs that detail the failure rate of hard drives over the first four years of their life.


Backblaze hard drive failure rate, over the first four years

It seems that hard drives have three distinct failure “phases.” In the first phase, which lasts 1.5 years, hard drives have an annual failure rate of 5.1%. For the next 1.5 years, the annual failure rate drops to 1.4%. After three years, the failure rate explodes to 11.8% per year. In short, this means that around 92% of drives survive the first 18 months, and almost all of those (90%) then go on to reach three years.

Extrapolating from these figures, just under 80% of all hard drives will survive to their fourth anniversary. Backblaze doesn’t have figures beyond that, but its distinguished engineer, Brian Beach, speculates that the failure rate will probably stick to around 12% per year. This means that 50% of hard drives will survive until their sixth birthday.

Hard drive failure conforms to the bathtub curve — a curve that reliability engineers use that neatly illustrates the three distinct phases of a product’s lifecycle

Why hard drives die

There are three distinct failure phases — and, correspondingly, three distinct ways in which hard drives die. Failures in the first year are primarily caused by manufacturing defects. This describes the lemon effect — where, despite most of your drive live for years, some just die after a few months. Between 18 and 36 months, drive deaths are caused by random failures— small, random issues that only occur if you’re unlucky. Then, as the drive moves into its fourth year, failure rates skyrocket as drives start to wear out — the various components can only rotate, gyrate, and actuate so many times before something goes sprronngggg.

It’s worth noting that Backblaze uses normal, consumer-level drives — the kind of drives with 12- or 36-month warranties. Considering around 97.5% of these drives are still alive after one year, and about 90% are alive after three years, these warranties are probably spot-on.

Hard drive failure rate, by quarter, for the first four years

In the case of enterprise-class hard drives with five-year warranties, they are probably manufactured to higher tolerances and subjected to more stringent quality assurance testing. We’re only guessing here, but enterprise-class drives probably don’t have the same year-one infant mortality rate, but still die off fairly quickly once their moving parts start to wear out (4+ years).

In conclusion… back up your data!

So, there you have it: If you buy a hard drive today, there’s a 90% chance that it will survive for three years. If your drive makes it to the three-year point, you would be wise to back up your data, as there’s a 12% chance per year that your drive will die.

It’s worth noting that these figures are for internal hard drives: External hard drives, for a large number of factors, may not last as long (though if you only plug it in every few days to back your data up, it might last longer). It’s also worth mentioning that Backblaze’s drives are spinning constantly — these failure rates are for drives that are turned on 24/7. Your home computer probably isn’t powered up 24/7, and thus the drives may last longer.

Because there’s a 5.1% chance that your drive will die in its first year, you should either back up your data regularly — or, if you’re feeling dangerous, not keep any valuable data on that drive until it’s worked out any kinks and survived to the 18-month mark. After 36 months, though, you should definitely back up your data, or copy the data to a new hard drive. (Backblaze, at $5/month for unlimited backup space, is a remarkably good deal.)

Backblaze says it will continue to update its data as the years go by, so that we can see if the failure rate indeed stays the same after the four-year mark. Of course, the other statistic we’re interested in is the failure rate of solid-state drives — but I imagine it’ll still be a few years until one company has enough SSDs to give us a good idea of the failure rate of NAND flash.




Source

[Zigen]

Luck of the draw, if you're lucky your drive can last decades, if you're unlucky your drive could last less than a year! I suppose hours or usage and conditions play a part too.

[shasi]

only 4 years :huh:

[Beamslider]

I have had very good luck with hard drives....Have only had a couple that failed over the years and the couple that failed died in the first year.

I have an old IBM XT with a 10 MB hard drive in it that I keep because I like the look of the 1980's tank...It has a 10MB Hard drive in it that is 30 years old and still working.

[Airstream_Bill]

One hard drive with Win XP on it 8 yrs. so far. It is running all the time. And my netbook drive is 5 yrs. old Win7 and it is on all the time. Do not play games just mess around on the Internet.

[smallhagrid]

Some drives last ALOT longer than others.

I have a few really old Samsung 40 & 80GB drives that are still very good and around 8 years old.

In the years since those I've known folks with the newer, smaller Samsung drives that only lasted about a year.

I've also known alot of folks with SATA drives that died much too soon.

[avmad]

Interesting thanks. One i've just ordered has a 5 year warranty :) It probably won't cover everything though.

[jackieo]

I bought a WD Raptor SATA 76 gig 10,000 rpm back in 2006, its still running today ...knock wood :)

[VileTouch]

it's simple. the more you use it, the faster it will die... i know, this is not a very comforting thought for people like me that have their computers on 24/7/365 but thats how it is

[Cyberboom]

only 4 years :huh:

This is only a experimental result :)

Hard Driver Disks live longer than 4 year depending on the usage rate for example external HDD should live longer than HDD inside a gaming PC (I think !) :rolleyes:

[smallhagrid]

Since hard disk drives actually first arrived I have noticed some things...

- Thermal stress seems to be a huge factor - and how they cool when off then heat when running is significant in this discussion.

- Design is also a big thing...the ancient MFM & RLL drives from ~20 years ago still run & hold data...go figure.

- Like SSDs, HDDs are affected by whether they have constant accesses (head movements).

- The warranty is only as good as it's company; many times they have been changed and users find out the hard way when they need

a replacement and find out that it is no longer covered.

I have friends with businesses whose servers and workstations have been running for years, non-stop with very few failures ever.

These are used for business apps and backups off-hours so they get alot less accesses than a gamer's rig does.

I've always left my CPUs running 24/7 when I am home and that has worked well for me.

(We also have a/c in the summer so they never get too hot either.)

[insanedown58]

Seagate's still runnin' but its starting to tick... (not sort of literally).. No sounds but I've started to have my share of corrupted installs here and there. Then again, the thing's 6 years old.

[J.D]

I find HDD last ~4 years, have only one that is 5 years old but no longer in daily use .I use a mix of SSD's plus HDD's now - had one OCZ (SSD) go tits up but was replaced under warranty .I had Samsung HDD which went kaput in <2 years - WD are my choice at the moment .

[Pedrito]

I have an "old" computer with a Seagate hard drive (320 GB) that I bought around 6 years ago!

Seagate is the only brand that never gave me any problems, and the hard drives last until I throw them away. :showoff:

Edited November 13, 2013 by Pedrito

[MidnightDistortions]

I haven't had too many desktop hard drives fail, most of them have held out through the years except for a few. I've seen some that has gone bad in less then 5 years, but you have to wonder what is the user doing to them to make them go bad. Some of the failures that happen within a few years i think are defective, some of them are not built perfect enough to last 4-8 years. As always it's better to back up your data anyway. You can't really predict when the are going to die but there are plenty of software to help figure when they are showing errors.

[mazigh]

My Experience is good till now, about 6 years and still fine , I think I should give some credit to WD, luck and Diskeeper :P

NB: I can't give the article a lot of credit as tests are done by online backup service company xD

Edited November 13, 2013 by mazigh