What activity is hardest on a hard drive

[waiting]

What activity is hardest on a hard drive---
1. working with graphics
2. surfing net
3. word processing?
Using WinXP home 512RAM 50free GB

[glc]

1.

[Kov-Ice]

Curious... Why do you ask?

[waiting]

I've heard hard drives have a clock time..........like bic lighters....they get used for 2-5yrs and then get tossed out...Is this true?

[kilgoretrout]

They all have a stated "mean time before failure"(MTBF) but that's just an average and often highly manipulated. The length of the warranty is the best indication of how long the manufacturer thinks the drive will last. However, some seem to puke right away and some seem to last forever. The number of writes to the disk doesn't seem to have much to do with the life of the drive in my experience.

[David M]

I would think the total number of reads and writes plus the total amount of time the drive is spinning is what matters. Anyone else have ideas? All mechanical things eventually wear out.

[Panama Red]

I'm no expert on hard drive construction but I've been working with electric motors for close to 30 years. The single biggest cause of failure in a motor is bearing failure. Since hard drives have bearings in them, these have to contribute to drive failure. I know some hard drives make a clicking sound when they fail and I'm guessing that's the read/arm device not working or a bearing that's beginning to freeze up. Others just quit without making any noise. Probably related to a control board or component failure. Heat would be a big factor causing bearing or electronic component failure. Being able to predict the "when" of a hard drive failure would be pretty tough given all the variables. Best practice is keep everything backed up that is vital and figure your hard drive could be the next to fail. Just gotta be prepared.

[Hi Ho]

What about drives with fluid bearings? I'm not even sure exactly how those work but don't those last a lot longer than regular bearings? I recently had my old Deathstar die. It clicked a lot before it went. The diagnostics came up clean. I still have a 6GB Fujitsu that's 7 or 8 years old and it still works fine. I think it has fluid bearings.

[waiting]

A friend of mine leaves his disktop computer on 24/7. After he uses his computer he turns off his monitor. He claims its less stressful on his OS to leave it on 24/7..His harddrives last about 5 years. Your opinions please. Thank you..........George

[Kov-Ice]

Originally Posted by waiting A friend of mine leaves his disktop computer on 24/7. After he uses his computer he turns off his monitor. He claims its less stressful on his OS to leave it on 24/7..His harddrives last about 5 years. Your opinions please. Thank you..........George

That's a different ball of wax. There are several threads dealing with everyone's opinions on that one. I also run 24/7, but to my knowledge, it's to reduce the stress of expansion and contraction caused by heat and cold. Dunno that it makes any difference for the OS, other than reducing the time you have to wait for the computer to be ready for you to use.

[Hi Ho]

I run my PC's 24/7. I had never had a hard drive fail until the Deathstar died and that was expected.

[Big Weapons]

Has everyone had a Deathstar die? I gave mine away when it started clicking like mad, but my friend has been running it for 2 years and it's still going. Figures.

[waiting]

Does the hard drive last any longer if you leave the computer on 24/7?

[Hags]

Again that is another opinion thing found on these forums, in my direct opinion I believe that letting the hdd run 24/7 would be less stressfull on the motor, because just like car engines, the most stressful time on the hdd motor is on a cold startup.

[Force Flow]

Originally Posted by Big Weapons Has everyone had a Deathstar die? I gave mine away when it started clicking like mad, but my friend has been running it for 2 years and it's still going. Figures.

I've had several die on machines that have been brought in for repairs.

They don't call them deathstars for nothing.

As for the clicking drive, I hope you told your friend that it was dieing before he used it.

[Hi Ho]

My Deathstar started clicking like mad not long before it died. By the time it died it was making a "click.... squeak" every ten seconds.

[waiting]

Originally Posted by Hi Ho My Deathstar started clicking like mad not long before it died. By the time it died it was making a "click.... squeak" every ten seconds.

What is "Deathstar"?

[mountainking]

lol word processing and surfacing the net combined dont even match video work. Word processing and surfing the net dont even do barely anything to the hard drive or ram.

[Hi Ho]

What is "Deathstar"?

It was a hard drive line from IBM a couple years ago that was very unreliable. It was actually Deskstar. They got the "Deathstar" nickname when it was found how bad they were. There was a class action lawsuit against IBM over those drives. They were acutally made by Hitatchi. Soon after that debacle IBM pulled out of the hard drive market completely. The funny thing is that Hitatchi still uses the Deskstar name on their drives. Not a good idea.

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by waiting I've heard hard drives have a clock time..........like bic lighters....they get used for 2-5yrs and then get tossed out...Is this true?

Negative. Any drive can fail at any time, but they can also go almost forever. Look at all the machines out there that have 1 or 2 GB drives (which were huge at that time) and are still running just fine.

[waiting]

HiHo: Thanks for the interesting info on DeathStar....

Two rails: Are you using yur smaller hard drives?..........

I wonder if new hard drives have a buillt in clock time of 2-3yrs, and then when the warantee is up, so is the hard drive.

[Yuanji]

hard drives don't have a built in time of how long they are good for. you can usually bet by the warranty that the drives will last at least that long or the company has confidence that the majority of their drives will last that long. Take, for example my raptor drive. one lasted for a day before it broke down, one didn't even work, the one i'm using right now has worked for about a year and it's still fine. That's just to show you that drives even of the same model will have greatly varied lifespans. I personally shut down my computer every night after i'm done with it for the day because i want to save on electricity.

[waverider]

Hi, interesting thread. I was told by a tech type that the more recent hard drives may not last as long as older ones due to planned obsolescence being built into them. Any ideas on that out there ? Thanks

[glc]

I think that's a conspiracy theory. Why would a manufacturer intentionally try to get a reputation for building unreliable drives? If anything, they are trying to use advanced technology to build the biggest drives they can as cheap as they can to be competitive in the market. That's what killed the "Deathstar" - that was the first drive on the market with a glass substrate material for the platters instead of (I think) aluminum, and they jumped the gun before field testing the technology as well as they should have. The magnetic material had a nasty tendency to flake off of the glass, and they were very prone to physical shock damage.

[Jaggannath]

Originally Posted by waverider Hi, interesting thread. I was told by a tech type that the more recent hard drives may not last as long as older ones due to planned obsolescence being built into them. Any ideas on that out there ? Thanks

This is like the old adage that things aren't what they used to be... of course they're not, nowadays we're expecting a toaster to be able to plan my day out for the next four years, and then wondering why after 5 years one small component on it fails. If it was made up of 3 bits, they're less likely (assuming similar failure rates) than 10 bits

As to hard drives being made to fail, where would the money be in making them to fail?? If I had a Maxtor or a Seagate or a WD fail on me, I'd be dubious about using another but they're reliable brands... any other brand, and I'd never go back to them. Therefore, they'd be losing rather than gaining potential customers

[bigandy]

Then again, if they made them perfectly, you wouldn't need to buy new drives, so where's the money in that .

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by waiting ...Two rails: Are you using yur smaller hard drives?....

No, in the major sense, meaning not in my everyday machines. I plain old need more room. Yes, in the minor sense, that I still have old machines laying around with still working old drives, and yes I still have my original 1 GB and 2 GB drives for testing and the like. There are probably millions of office machines with 5 or 10 GB drives that are still just humming along. I know there are lots of these dinosaurs at work.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by TwoRails There are probably millions of office machines with 5 or 10 GB drives that are still just humming along. I know there are lots of these dinosaurs at work.

LOL...like the 8GB Quantum 5400 RPM HDD in the HP Vectra VL I use at work. It's small and slow, but it's still working.

Cricket

[TwoRails]

Exactly, Cricket !

[Hi Ho]

Then again, if they made them perfectly, you wouldn't need to buy new drives, so where's the money in that

There are a lot of super reliable products from companies that aren't exactly losing money. Just look at Honda and Toyota (I know, not exaclty PC related ). It makes sense to makea good product especially when it comes to hard drives that can end up holding critical data. If my hard drive died at the end of the warranty (1 year) and took all of my pictures and documents with it I wouldn't be going out to buy another of the same brand.