Probability of a hard drive fail?

Ease

Ease

Ease

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How many of you have had a hard drive fail on you, and how many hard drives have you owned?

I've been playing with computers since before I can remember, and I've never had a hard drive fail on me without a power surge that fried everything. I'm considering a few RAID options to upgrade to over the summer (as I should be getting a new job!) but I think knowing the probabilities of drive failures would really help me decide.

As I've not had a single failure so far, I am leaning towards RAID 0. So yeah, if you guys could tell me how many hard drives and hard drive failures you've had it would be really useful! Especially if you could add how long you had had the specific hard drives before they had failed.

Many thanks!
 
I've seen more drives fail than I can count - vast majority of them were IDE Maxtors. I'd go as far as to say I've never owned an IDE Maxtor that didn't die - SATA seemed OK.

I've also seen a lot of Apple drives fail - but then I tend to be the guy that everyone gives their computers to when things go wrong, so my experiences may not be what you're looking for. ;)
 
In 15+ years of pc ownership, ive owned more than a dozen hdd's, out of that maybe 2-3 have failed.
In my work we have nearly 1000 PC's which have just recently been replaced with new kit... over the last four years ive seen a dozen drives fail, and out of the 30+ servers, half a dozen have failed... 2 in the last 2 months (SAS drives).

It's one of those things that just happen, no explanation!

At the end of the day, you need a hdd so don't let it worry you.
 
Only drive i've every had fail is my sky+ hdd which is an OEM seagate/maxtor drive. Oh and i did have one seagate portable external hdd DOA. Simple answer is to keep a full backup on an external drive and to create a hard copy backup of anythign you dont want to loose in the highly unlikely event both your main drive and the backup fail at the same time.
 
This article suggests a 3% chance in the first year of a new drive, and more after that. Personally I've never had a HDD die on me; here's a list of drives I've owned
Laptop 60GB - 2.5 years, working when sold on
External 400GB - 2 years, working when sold on (had a dicky episode but that turned out to be a partition error)
External 500GB - 2 years, still working (though circuit board needs replacing really)
External 750GB - 1.5 years, working when sold on
External 120GB portable - 2 years, still working
External 500GB portable - 2 months lol, still working
Internal 320GB - 1.5 years, working when sold on
Secondhand internal 120GB (IDE Maxtor) :p, I had it for 1 year but previous owner had it for 3+ years, working when sold on
I now have eight internal drives varying in age from 1.5 years to new.

Long may it continue! Perhaps my policy of continually upgrading to bigger sizes has stopped me from having a failure - maybe I never have a drive long enough.
Although my flash drive I keep with my keys recently died, but then I'd had it maybe 3-4 years and it kept getting thrown around onto hard surfaces..
 
Thank you for all the replies already! I'd like even more tales of woe from other members to get a fairer idea, but as I wait for those tales, I was hoping someone could answer a question for me. If you have RAID 1, and one of your disks fail, how do you find out that one of them has failed?!
 
3 drives in total, 1 IBM Deathstar DOA, 1 IBM Deathstar that died after about 5years of constant use and an unknown drive that died in my works PC afer an unknown length of time.
 
Ease said:
Thank you for all the replies already! I'd like even more tales of woe from other members to get a fairer idea, but as I wait for those tales, I was hoping someone could answer a question for me. If you have RAID 1, and one of your disks fail, how do you find out that one of them has failed?!
Click to expand...

I've always been under the impression you get alerted by a message of some sort, whether in Windows or on startup, but I guess it depends on the RAID controller.
 
A few years ago we got 14 new Dell machines at work and three of them had their hard drive fail in the first 3 months.

From memory they were either Maxtor or IBM and there was a lot on the internat about very high failure rates.

Apart from that just the odd very old drive from years and years ago. Nothing recent and SATA (touch wood)
 
I've had three fail on me so far, one died yesterday after I had just backed up all the important files...not sure why, tried it in two different machines...nothing.

The first one that failed was a Maxtor (IDE) - got an RMA and that failed too after about a year.
 
Most common component I end up replacing in clients machines is dying hard drives, but they are usually a good few years old by then.
 
Two.

1. A DOA WD from OcUK.

2. A drive in a 386. I turned on the PC, then turned on an attached dot matrix printer. *KABLAM*. Opened it up, and some parts on the mobo were charred. :eek:

HDD controller was dead, so had to use 5.25 inch floppies. :(
 
ok Here we go

Maxtor Diomand 80 GB IDE Did not fail until i accidently dropped it (had it for 3 years)

Seagate Baracudea 300 GB Failed after 3 years :( played around with it loads and moved from about 5 different PCS

74 x Raptors Raid 0 Had for 2 years and have not failed :) lovley Drives

500 GB F1 had for about half a year :) Not failed
 
I've had maybe a dozen drives for the past 10 years
And 2 have died
1 was a 160gb Seagate IDE and the most recently was a 200gb Maxtor IDE
Current drives are
F1 1TB and 2x320gb
7200.11 1tb
2x7200.10 320gb
and a Samsung 80gb
all are quiet and properly ventilated so they never go above 35c
 
So it seems IDE are worse than SATA in respect to failure rates? Mine could be better ventilated, but that will soon be remedied with a new case.
 
touch wood, only 1 died

That i blame on a dodge enclosure, which cooked the seagate 7200 baracuda... but maybe it was co-incidence and that drive was dying anyway.... dunnon
 
Ease said:
So it seems IDE are worse than SATA in respect to failure rates? Mine could be better ventilated, but that will soon be remedied with a new case.
Click to expand...

IDE drives are older tech and have been in use longer, so there will always be more IDE drive deaths on this thread than SATA. That doesn't mean it's anything to do with the interface.
 
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