When to change bad drives (life span)

[Randall8686]

hi guys so one of my WD purples on the cctv Cm just failed. Dead as a door nail. It’s 18 months old so should be replaced free.

However made me check the WD reds in the system and they are showing that the warranty expired in 2014 so can only guess they are at least 6 years old.

Now I do have a parity drive but is there a point I should replace them? Or at least the parity drive?

 

[Quartz]

How valuable is the data they store? How much trouble will a failed HDD cause?

 

[Rroff]

No way to tell really with HDDs - I've found on average in things like NAS and CCTV, etc. with daily use if drives don't fail fairly early on then they go to at least a little over 5.5 years before I start to see some throwing up errors in SMART and/or dying but many will go on beyond that fine.

 

[Pocah]

Warranty has little to do with it. Some drives are more reliable than others. But in general I replace drives about every five years.

 

[Habakkuk]

Infant mortality of drives aside, the operating temperature & spin up/down of drives is the main cause of wear & tear.

I've also had a few drives that have died after being pulled from a system - shock helps finish them off.