Life expectancy of hard drives?

[Gwion]

I have a 50MB HD from 1988 and it still works!
Its in my A2000

[Gaiyan]

actung_bab wrote:
maxtor drives arent very good l brought one by accident
and wasint good so got the guy to replace with segate and it worked fine.

l have never had hard drive fail completly . some have had errors etc .

mind you l did have jazz drive go on my that was anyoing it cost alot of money ended up in the bin.

 :-)

So just because 1 Maxtor drive failed on you it automatically isn't a good brand?

As for drives failing. I have had a lot of bad luck with them. I have been a "spokesperson" for SSD for years now, long before they were even feasible. I hate the fact that they keep developing drives in a way that they can fit more data per square inch. That just makes it more prone to errors. I think the main reason the old 80's drives are still working is the fact that the data isn't so tightly packed and the disks were like 5" across.

Joshua.

[persia]

Hard dries get too small long before they die.  I needed a floppy drive for some old floppies, so I fired up an old AT, the hard drive worked flawlessly despite being a couple decades old.  The floppies, being floppies of course, didn't do as well...

[redrumloa]

tokyoracer wrote:
Older ones seem to last longer then the newer ones as a rule.

I think that is safe to say. I have only gotten about 2-3 years out of my last few new drives. My current 250Gb drive is a little over a year old and starting to misbehave.

[HopperJF]

No one here seems to have mentioned what I think the problem is.

Old hard drives seem to last longer because Windows XP or Vista with its constant hard disk churning didn't exist when they were in their prime.

They had nice efficient OSes like Amiga Workbench and other OSes which did not grind the disk so much.

I have people who have had the exact same hard drive in a Windows and another system, both purchased at the same time and used regularly, guess which one died first?

[Srbin]

You threw away an Amiga?? *faints*  
I hope you mean figuratively 'threw' away. :boohoo:

No, it is not figurative. I know this is blasphemy, but i knew i will never start it again once i tried UAE.

Should give it to someone, but it is too late now....

[Merc]

It seems to vary depending on the particular model, but I've seen more dead Maxtors than any other drive..  The older Quantums seem to be bulletproof (still know of an old 52 megger that works fine) and I personally use Western Digitals these days and have no complaints.  Seagates now have 5yr warranties so they're probably decent enough.

As far as older drives I try to avoid any that have that nasty metal on metal sounding whirr when they're running, or anything that goes clickety-clickety-clickety randomly

I think the biggest thing is to keep them as cool as possible and make life easy on the bearings and the electronics.  Oh and don't hot-plug anything onto a power cable that's also connected to your HD.  Don't ask me how I know...  :-o

[Retro_71]

I also have had more maxtor drive fail then any other (that's why i will not buy or recommend them). I have been using Seagate with a few Samsung and WD HDD for the last 10 years and have had only 6 (4 of them were early SATA 1 Drives fail) out of about 150 - 200 drive that i have purchased.
It basicaly comes down to you get what you pay for i rather spend $50 - $100 extra on a drive and know that it will last longer than go for a cheaper drive.

EDITED:
Back on topic i have had 5 2.5" drive fail over the last 4 weeks and a 3.5" scsi as well, they where all 15yr+. They were the cheaper brands so you really do get what you pay for since i have plenty of seagates, quantium and fujitsu drive working.