When to replace mechanical HDD?

leSLIe

leSLIe

Fisting is Too Mainstream for Me
Joined
Oct 18, 2004
Messages
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One of my hard drives just had the dreaded "click of death" :bored:... I will take it to a data recovery lab soon.:arghh: It was a 3TB Seagate HD, and almost 4 years old.

I don't want this to happen again. Do you have a procedure or best practice regarding when to replace aging HDs?
Like once they are 3 years old you should take it offline and move your data to another HD? :stop:
 
It's the solution I'd recommend. HDDs can run days, weeks, months, years, decades. It's always gonna be a gamble without redundancy or a backup plan
 
Some just Excellent ones now. these newer ones are pretty fast for an HDD.
That said don't really need one and save your old drives..got a few ok ssd's and a few 1TBs a wd blue and a old Hitatchi all ok. Don't really need storage much.
Most of the HDD's can run for years so id hang on to them.
 
I have my docs on a 3tb drive that is mirrored via RAID1 to another identical 3tb drive. The important docs & photos are backed up locally to a small NAS (RAID 5, 4x1tb) in another room. Really important photos are backed up to my Flickr account and really important docs (financial) go to my OneDrive or Google Drive cloud storage.

As to upgrades - I will usually replace a drive when one of these two conditions occurs:

1) Failure of existing part
2) New technology "sufficiently*" exceeds speed or storage capacity of current setup - switch from mechanical to Sata SSD to M.2 PCIE to NVME
 
When are we gonna have spintronic storage devices? :bored:
 
Sorry to hear about your experience here, losing data is never fun. If you would like to check into any potential warranty on the drive, you can use our Warranty Validation Tool.

The best way to protect yourself against hard drive failure (and expensive professional data recovery labs) is a good backup strategy, the most widely recommended one is probably the 3-2-1 method: Keep 3 copies of your data, stored on 2 different mediums, and 1 offsite in case of disaster. If you've got a solid backup strategy in place, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to run an old hard drive until it's time to break out the metaphorical shovel and bury it, because you will have your data safe somewhere else. The other thing you can do is regularly run diagnostic software on your drives, there are many great ones out there, we offer a free one called SeaTools.
 
I'll usually look to replace a drive when it past the halfway point in the warranty. I also only buy 5yr warranty drives. Redundancy is also key, but let's not forget about bit-rot which can also corrupt files. Comparing backups to make sure all files are perfect bit-by-bit copies is important as well.
 
I like to "upgrade" every 4yrs or so. Went from 1tb-2tb-3tb-4tb, all have been working when sold on ebay. Last time sold a 3tb green for $66 and got a bad deal on 4tb red(had to use office Depot rewards) But most times its about $30 per upgrade
 
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Run em till their dead. Even at work, we replace drives every 3-4 years pre-emptively, the old drives that were still in working order become offline offsite storage archives

You gotta have a backup strategy anyway. May as well get as much use out of the drives as you can.
 
leSLIe said:
One of my hard drives just had the dreaded "click of death" :bored:... I will take it to a data recovery lab soon.:arghh: It was a 3TB Seagate HD, and almost 4 years old.

I don't want this to happen again. Do you have a procedure or best practice regarding when to replace aging HDs?
Like once they are 3 years old you should take it offline and move your data to another HD? :stop:
Click to expand...

Click Click Move (to a different HD).

I've gone solid state.
 
Kwaz said:
Click Click Move (to a different HD).

I've gone solid state.
Click to expand...

I have solid state drives, obviously, but it could get pricey if you want to use them as storage...
 
In my opinion, spinners are just fine for bulk data. Just regard each drive as if it's a lemming standing on the edge of a cliff amd you'll be fine. In other words, HDDs are like farts... dont trust them. Not once, not ever.
 
In my last PC, I had 2 2TB WD Green and 1TB WD Black drives, all lasted for over 5 years of daily usage without any issues.
Until a PSU failure burned all of them :arghh:

For home storage purpose, I think modern drives are pretty durable these days.
But there are other factors that could kill your HDD besides reliability issues.

Hence, IMO it's better to invest in backup rather than preemptively replacing them.
 
leSLIe said:
I have solid state drives, obviously, but it could get pricey if you want to use them as storage...
Click to expand...

Obviously.

I think that a lot of data centers rely on smart error = shred.

Not every drive is great for prolonged use / high temps. Buy accordingly and you should be good.

I usually get WD Black. Sometimes you can find WD Reds in things for amazing deals. There's some debate as to whether those drives are refurbished / didn't meet database standards though.
 
leSLIe said:
One of my hard drives just had the dreaded "click of death" :bored:... I will take it to a data recovery lab soon.:arghh: It was a 3TB Seagate HD, and almost 4 years old.

I don't want this to happen again. Do you have a procedure or best practice regarding when to replace aging HDs?
Like once they are 3 years old you should take it offline and move your data to another HD? :stop:
Click to expand...
that's your problem seagate i can pickup 3tb anytime for 56... as for when i change them depends when i have need for more storage... i have somewhere around 10TB in my laptop bag and 50TB at home. I move my data around somewhat frequently as i have gone from 250gb drives to 500gb to 1tb to 3tb to 8tb drives... my laptop has 2 2tb drives in it as well as a 500gb ssd...

https://smile.amazon.com/HGST-Ultra...=UTF8&qid=1515540058&sr=8-1&keywords=hgst+3tb
 
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