25,000-Drive Study Gives Insight On How Long Hard Drives Actually Last 277
MrSeb writes with this excerpt, linking to several pretty graphs: "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? According to some new data, gathered from 25,000 hard drives that have been spinning for four years, it turns out that hard drives actually have a surprisingly low failure rate."
Re:Um.. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it's a CONSPIRACY in which they've invested ALL their manufacturing PRECISION into guaranteeing that the drives will fail precisely THREE DAYS after WARRANTY.
Consider this! You register for warranty, and you enter the purchase date, right? What if... WHAT IF... some FIRMWARE CODES in the drive pick up this transaction and STORE THE INFORMATION IN FLASH. Then then starting the day after warranty expiry the drive STARTS TO DO BAD THINGS f.e. not park properly or run just a little too slowly or maybe even there's like a secret drop of DESTRUCTION SAUCE which is released onto the platters at this time.
Anyway you see where I'm getting here? REPTILE OVERLORDS are conspiring with 9/11 truthers (yeah they're in on it! it's all a false flag operation) to destroy hard drives.
And this whole study.
Is.
SPONSORED BY A JEWISH-OWNED CORPORATION.
Yeah.
Re:Um.. (Score:4, Funny)
Not one connection to the NSA, or Snowden's ex-girlfriend, or the World Bank, or two employees at Infowars who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their true jobs with the Bilderberg Group? FAIL.
Re:Um.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Am I the only one (Score:2, Funny)
Long hard drives are nice, but Tour golfers realize that accurate chipping and putting is for the dough.
Re:Um.. (Score:4, Funny)
chemtrails don't exist, they're just soul shadows of the RUSSIAN WOODPECKER. now that was some hardcore shit.
Re:Um.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Useless study (Score:5, Funny)
Need lube to get more statements out of your ass?
Re:Um.. (Score:5, Funny)
For the last 4 years I've had to deal with WD RE2, RE3 and RE4 hard drives. Although they are enterprise sata hard drives, they seem to fail at a rate much worse than the consumer ones Backblaze based their report on. I see much fewer problems in the first year but they usually start dying when they reach 16000 power-on hours, with only about 40% exceeding 26000 hours.
Having said that, I count sector reallocation as a failure. In my experience, as soon as a disk has non-zero value in Reallocated_Sector_Ct and Reallocated_Event_Count, it usually fails completely within a few weeks or months.
Fortunately, WD has a tool on their website which you must run before they give you an RMA number. I managed to get its source code:
int main()
{
printf ("Disk OK, no errors found.");
return 0;
}
Re:Useless study (Score:5, Funny)
Since you apparently already have the statistics, why do you need theirs?
Re:Um.. (Score:5, Funny)
Who is General Failure anyway, and why does he keep trying to read my hard drive??
I'm sorry, that's classified. And the NSA categorically denies doing it.
Re: Um.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seagate ST-225- 25 years old and still strong.. (Score:4, Funny)