What is The Lifespan of Hard Drives?
A lifespan of a hard drive varies more on a model than brand
So, what is a lifespan of a hard drive, and what are the factors that affect it? How about HDD vs SSD? What the stats say? What are the signs of hard drive failure? Does the defragmentation affect the lifespan of it?
Most hard drives come with a limited warranty that covers you only for up to three years. But your hard drive can last longer than that. In fact, it can survive the periodic laptop or desktop upgrade and, many years later, when you dust off your old computer, surprise you by loading all your data and working as smoothly as it always did.
Nevertheless, hard drives tend to be the first components to fail in a system. They contain movable parts which wear out in time. It’s good to know then some stats on how long hard drives last so that you can back up your data and plan ahead upgrades.
After all, you don’t want to lose all your images, documents, and music to a hard disk failure, do you? Find out more about how long hard drives last according to their type and what you can do to extend their lifespan.
What the Stats Say
Let’s start with the facts. A well-known Backblaze study found that roughly 90% of hard drives are still running after three years, and 80% after four years. The online backup service based its analysis on its own system of 25,000 running hard drives, noting each time one of them stopped working.
After four years, the annual failure rate for hard drives grows to over 11.8%. That’s more than twice compared to the first-year rate of 5.1%. After three or four years, many computer users today start thinking already about an upgrade. If you’re among them, you shouldn’t worry too much about upgrading your hard drive before then.
Of course, it’s possible for a brand-new hard drive to fail without warning a day, a week, or a month after it’s mounted, but that doesn’t happen all that often. Major manufacturers test their hard drives and usually don’t deliver dead-on-arrival devices either.
As far as brands are concerned, annual failure rates vary a lot from model to model. For example, the latest data from Backblaze suggests that Seagate hard drives have an annualized failure rate of 0.47% to 2.90%. So it usually pays off to research the specific HDD model you buy rather than the brand as a whole, to see whether other users have complained of HDD failure.
Also, it’s good to note that, according to the study at least, hard drives with a longer warranty tend to last longer. A longer warranty – say three years instead of one – suggests that the manufacturer has more confidence in the quality of the product, and often, this confidence is well-founded.
Is It True That SSDs Last Longer?
The differences between hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD) encompass the lifespan as well. As their name suggests, SSDs don’t have a moving platter or minuscule moving parts that are subject to wear.
The flash technology that SSDs use makes them not only faster than HDDs, but also increases their lifespan, though individual variations between models and brands make this difficult to quantify. Still, SSDs, just like HDDs, are prone to capacitor-related failure.
In the end, there’s no rule that says that a cheap SSD from a lower-tier brand will fail faster than an expensive HDD from a top brand, but that may happen.
Factors That Can Shorten a Hard Drive’s Lifespan
It’s not just the build quality of a hard drive that determines its lifespan. Many hard drives fail because their electric motor stops working. Hard drive failure is also common if the hard drive suffers a physical shock, e.g. if it’s dropped when you try to remove it from your computer, or if the computer itself falls or gets hit.
Here are some other key factors that can kill your hard drive, either slowly or in one fell swoop:
- Heat – A hard drive that runs all day will heat up more than one that runs just a few hours, though the quality of the chassis’ cooling system can make a difference. Different models have different thresholds past which heat becomes damaging. Hard drives used for servers that run more or less all day are the most vulnerable to the long-term effects of heat.
- Bad Power Supply – A bad power supply can damage all components, not just hard drives. Usually, power supply problems cause data loss, but if these are constant, or if there is some spike in the electric current that reaches the hard drive, it may damage it irremediably.
- Vibration – This occurs when a hard drive is not mounted properly and, over time, may cause damage to its moving parts. While vibration is not as bad as a direct shock to the drive, which may kill it outright, it’s best to avoid it.
But what about defragmentation? Can it reduce or prolong your hard drive’s lifespan?
The Impact of Defragmentation on a Hard Drive’s Lifespan
So far, no study that we know of found that defragmenting a hard drive had an impact on its lifespan. It will usually make it run faster but most likely not extend its lifespan, at least not considerably, since as already noted, most hard drive failures are actually mechanical in nature.
That said, defragmenting your hard drive excessively – such as every day – may increase its temperature, which in turn could cause heating. It’s best then to defrag only when you have to, that is, when the fragmentation levels of your drive exceed 5-10%.
Signs of Hard Drive Failure
For most users, hard drive failure is not easy to predict. It usually strikes when it’s least expected. Still, a dying hard drive may come with a few symptoms. Screen freezes and slow performance are perhaps the most common ones, but then these may have many other different causes.
Corrupted data warnings are more alarming, as are grinding or clicking noises coming from the hard disk. If you experience any of these, you should back up your data more often than regularly, just to be sure.
Today, data can almost always be salvaged from a dead hard drive, but at a cost. And it’s not just a question of money but also of privacy, since data recovery services will be able to see the recovered data.
