# How long do hard drives actually live for?



## ekim68 (Jul 8, 2003)

> 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.


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## GmwMinc (Nov 14, 2013)

Depends on what brand are you having and how you use it also the environment of your PC.
Usually Seagate & Western Digital do produce great quality and long lifespan of HDDs.
If you take either of 'em and have a* good environment(suitable temperature for the HDD)* also *treating the HDD well*, it would survives for almost a decade!

I've HDDs from both Seagate and WD, and they're 'bout 15 years old yet still working. Certainly, I'm no longer using'em (due to the low storage capacity).

Hope it help.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Only data for 4 years ????
Backblaze should have been using WDs Black Series with a 5yr warranty.
I've heard that a leading cause of HD failure (with age) is patter wobble and the better HDs use a double platter support.

So far, I've had one WD Black fail in just under 5 years .. (Bad Sector) .. WD replaced it and even paid the return shipping.
A HD is no place to save a buck or two and use a cheaper HD.



> It's worth noting that Backblaze uses normal, consumer-level drives - the kind of drives with 12- or 36-month warranties.


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

I've had a dozen WD Black drives fail out of several dozen deployed, and dozens more enterprise Seagate drives fail from an even greater number of deployed drives. Drives fail, it's a simple fact, hence why backups are so critical.


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## hewee (Oct 26, 2001)

I had a Bad Sector on a newer WD drive and then marked the Bad Sector and used the drive for 8 years. It's still good and was the old 98SE I had.


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