Poll: Reliability of Various Storage Drives

I have had a hard drive fail on me

  • Yes

    Votes: 976 85.1%

  • No

    Votes: 171 14.9%
  • Total voters
    1,147
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
N/A

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Yes

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Yes

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
No, because of #6

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Yes. Weekly full backups and daily incrementals to DLT Tape
 
Woot! I was the 100th to answer the poll :D

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you? yes (20GB Western Digital)

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these) yes (Lexar 256MB)

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these) not yet! (knocks on wood)

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you? no

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable? no (Always been able to recover it!)

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen? Yes, backup to external harddrive one a month at home, one a day at work to SAN.
 
Asgorath said:
I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Click to expand...

I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you? Yes, several actually

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these) nah.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these) No

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you? yes,

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable? yes

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen? I sure as hell do now :)
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes IBM Deskstars and Ultrastars (worst drives on the face of the planet die months after the warrentys are up )
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Yes Cheap Media i recently bought a 50 pack of TDK 16x DVD-R Discs will only burn at 4x without being unreadable
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
no, i trust my Seagate and maxtor HD's
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes, three to be exact. Two of them failed in my old computer and one in my dad's old computer. However, all of the drives that failed were in SFF computers and were setup in such a way that they'd run (way) hotter than in normal ATX cases.

Two of them were IBM Deskstar 40GV models. One lived eleven months (died just a couple of weeks before the warranty expired, luckily). The other (which I upgraded the firmware upon Lenovo, then IBM's recommendations) lived for three years and isn't really "dead", but it clicked and grinded whenever it tried to access anything that was near the end of the drive. I put it in my grandma's old Pentium 100 and it's still working with the 7.9GB jumper setting on it (they are both 20GB in capacity). BTW, the second one was the replacement for the first one that died just weeks before the warranty expired.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
No... not yet. Both my keychain and my watch (heheh) are new.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Hell yeah. Some of the data in generic CD/DVD media I use(d) tend to self-destruct. In particular my Memorex CD-RWs seem to rot themselves inside out, even with care (a picture is worth a thousand words if anyone cares to look, I'll upload images). Care as in store away from sunlight and at moderate temperatures. Note that I can't really get "room temperature" and "mild humidity" around here. I live in the Philippines, it always rains and there's no such thing as being "inland". I literally live fifty meters away from the sea. Then again, many of my media don't have any problems with rotting out or just not wanting to be read.

Gotten quite a few coasters from each brand and drive I've used, although that might not count.

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
No. But I've never actually deleted anything by "accident". I've deleted stuff and then went "OMFGWTFBBQ I wanted that file... ahhh what the heck..." but I've never really needed to undelete it.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
No, but then again I have almost no mission critical data on my computer. In the event of a failure all I lose is some e-mail, game saves, some easily-recreated game scripts/configs, pr0n and a few REALLY old reports (like two years old). Any "important" data that I have (reports, papers et. al) are always stored in two different computers and two different USB flash drives, all are updated when I come across the storage media.

My dad in the office *did* have important files in his harddrive when it died, now he has a backup system in his office where he offloads important files in two old computers on an offline LAN before he goes home from work.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
i have had 2 fail on me, and 3 ibms fail on other people.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
no pen drives have failed

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
yes, i had a pata hdd in an enclosure that just went kaputz

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
1 ricoh dvd/cdrw, 1 plextor 32x scsi, 2 zip drives

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
yes

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
yes, external hdd, dvdrw
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you? Yes WD's

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? Once

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? Yes

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you? Yes

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable? Yes

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen? Every 2 months a complete backup
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

Yes, too many times to mention

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you?

No but I only use them that often.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you?

Yes, at work a WD one that we used all the time died.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

Yes, many times.

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

No, hitting that delete button doesn't actually delete a file, there's always ways to recover them.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?

I archive stuff to DVDR, I'm building a raid5 file server for home soon.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
- Yes, stupid IBM Deskstar
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
- Don't use
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
- Don't use
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
- MANY!!!
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
- Fairly uncommon but yes.
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
- I use a second non-system HDD that only has files used for fresh installing and documents. I also backup media to DVD-R's when I hit 5GB free space. (I don't seem to do either enough though...)
 
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
no
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Yes, two or three actually.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
I burn cd's and dvd's of stuff I need every month or so.

~Adam
 
1. Yes, a Maxtor Diamondmax9 40GB ATA-133 drive. Booted up to the smell of burning PCB chips.

4. Yes, some Memorex high-speed CD-RW media (8X-10X) was unreadable after backing some stuff up onto the discs. Luckily I checked the CD before putting it away. The CDs are all unreadable now.

6. Yes, via external 3.5" USB/Firewire drive to a 120GB WD1200JB, and via 10/100 LAN to my secondary PC.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes. A 30GB Maxtor I had for about 5 years and I used pretty heavily.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
No, not yet.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Never used one.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
I've had some older CD-R media fail on me after a couple years, this was maybe 4 years ago and I have not had a problem since. I have not had any problems with DVD+R media (I do not use DVD-R media).

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Yes.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Not really, I usually keep multiple copies of important information stored on various media however.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
yes

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
no


4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
yes

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
yes

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
yes
 
1. No
2. No
3. Yes, Due to faulty inclosure

4. Yes, Due to scatching. Minor scratches were repairablewith something like GameDr

5. Yes. So many times....

6. Back up inportant files to my home server whenever I make major changes/updates.
 
1. Yes. Two Western Digitals

2. Never used

3. Never used

4. Plexwriter cdrw and a el-cheapo dvd rom from Gateway

5. Nope

6. Multiple hard drives and lots of cd's :D
 
1, 2. 4 yes. I think the thumbdrive was due to me dropping it too many times, but still, it seemed pretty crappy. It was when they were a fairly new development. Cost me over $100 bucks for a 128 MB drive, AT COST. Replaced for free though.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
yes, few maxtors and a few WD's
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
yes, but it went through the wash several times so i think that might have had an effect
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
ipod hdd failed when being used as an external drive
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
nope
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
not that i remember
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
yes, nightly incremental and weekly full of everything on the server (which is everything of importance
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
- Yes, 2 IBM, 1 WD, 1 Maxtor
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
- No
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
- Never had one
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
- yes, many in fact
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
- every once and awhile
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
- I ghost every once and awhile and do a batch backup 3 times a week of the critical files to another hard drive
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Never my own, but my aunt who's home is dusty as hell, and in a pc that was stuffed under a desk on a nasty old carpet, rife with dust, brought me her pc which had a dead harddrive in it, it was about 5 years or so old.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
I have one, and so far its working fine :)

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Never had one :)
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
I've had MANY cd's die on me, specifically they fall foul of the cd "fungus" problem where the aluminum layer is eaten away by bacteria destroying the disk.

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Yes yes i have, and i wish i could get them back at times, but i have never lost anything significant

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Mainly i take whats important and stuff it into my secondary HDD i should do more.. but to be honest nothing i have is so important that it can't be replaced.
The few major things i have are usually on my USB drive or on a CD.
 
Hopefully you aren't going to take the answers as some sort of representation of the general population. Doea a 'yes' answer to question 1 mean I have had a 100% hard drive failure rate?
Anyway, I'll be a good sport and answer:

1) yes. About 1-2% of drives fail before they are taken out of service, which is usually 3 to 5 years.

2) yes. due to multiple trips through the washing machine

3) no. Don't have nearly the sample size of the first two, though.

4)If you mean burning failures, yes. Burned CDs left in sunlight? Yes. Burned Cds properly stored? No.

5)Yes. Back in the DOS days before I had Norton Utilities.

6) Yes. Data written to 2 different types of media and additional hard drive backups. My personal stuff, back up to a cd once and a while since I do no important work on my home PCs.
 
1.yes sata seagate 14 months old when they were 12 months warranty.
2.no
3.no
4.no
5.yes
6.no
 
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
I've had many DVDs read poorly. But I have also had some really crapy cd/dvd burners in the past. My first CD burner actually burned a hole through a CD-r. Basicly I stoped letting my dad buy me no-name drives and bought my self a NEC :D

 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Yes

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Yes

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Yes
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
No
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Yes
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Yes, but then I started buying better media
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
No
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Yes
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
No

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
no

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
no

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
yes

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
no

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
yes, a simple vbscript that copies the things I want backed up onto a different harddrive, and is set to run weekly
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Nope

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
Not yet, one's getting real close..too many drops as well.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
No

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Yes

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Nope

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
I throw stuff on a second hard drive, upload little text files onto gmail, and burn cds every once in a while. Nothing big..no real data to lose. :p
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
YES

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
YES

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
NO but I have never used one.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
YES

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
YES

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
NO
 
I have seen several maxtor diamondmax8 7200rpm 20gb ata100 discs fail in the dell SFF machines at work. Very few western digital or seagate drives have failed in the same machines, it's almost exclusively these little slim maxtor drives that die on us. Not sure why, I suspect heat dissipation isn't all that great.
 
Asgorath said:
I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Click to expand...

1. Yes

2. No

3. No

4. yes

5. yes

7. Somewhat
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

Once (an under warranty maxtor)...most far outlive their usefulness.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

No

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

No.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?

No...maybe when HD dvd or bluray burners come out
 
1. yes, a wd 40gig when it was almost 3 years old, its twin that i ordered at the same time when it was 4 years old, and a really old wd 1gig many years ago

2. no, and i've been using my lexar 128mb for... well, since the time when they were pretty new to the market

3. no, been using one for... maybe a year now

4. no, not that i can think of, but i don't use em that much really

5. yes, quite a few times i'm sure, though i can't recall the circumstances

6. yes, i make copies of the really important stuff on a couple of my hard drives (i have lots :p ) and back it up to cd-rws every few months or so
 
Asgorath said:
I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you? Yes

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these) Nothing short of washing one did it

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these) No

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you? Yes

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable? Yes

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen? No
Click to expand...
questions answered in quote :)
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yup, about a year and a half ago my 60GB Deskstar (that should explain why it broke down) just one day decided to crap out on me, and that was back when i didn't have a USB key to back up most of my work related files...ugh got so pissed off when it happened...oh and i had only had the hard drive for a little over a year when it happened

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
USB pen? if you mean USB key then no, but then again i've only had one so far and it seems to be working just fine...

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Never had one

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
No

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
I've never really deleted a file 'by accident', or at least can't remember ever doing so.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Most of the stuff i currently work on (website stuff, .psd's or other images i'm modifying, etc.) i usually just put on my 256MB USB key
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
No, not an internal one.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
Yes, but my mother did it and she can be brutal with hers (carries it to and from work daily and really puts it through the ringer.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Yes, which is funny considering it was a backup. Didn't realize it went bad until it was time to put it back into the rotation.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
No, no problems yet ::crosses fingers::

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
No, thank goodness for PC File Inspector, that program recovers everything.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Yes, external hard drives mostly, but DVDs for true archives.
 
1 yes (too many to count)
2 yes (Lexar 128M Jumpdrive)
3 no - never used
4 yes
5 yes (back in the dos days)
6 yes (4G DAT)
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes, a seagate.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
no

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Yes, the enclosure died so I removed the hard drive

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
No

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
No

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Yes
 
1) Yes
2) No (But flash card media, yes)
3) yes
4) yes
5) of course. (Anyone who says otherwise is lying)
6) not really.
 
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