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Why do hard drives die?

J

JaYp146

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 24, 2005
Messages
5,546
Why do hard drives die?

No, seriously though, why?

Hard drives I've owned:

Maxtor: 60GB, 80GB
WD: 320GB, 160GB (external)
Seagate: 160GB
Hitachi: 80GB

I've owned/operated the two Maxtor drives for more than four years without a problem. The others have been purchased within the past two years and run without a hitch.

I know of several family members and friends who are all computer power users; only one has experienced hard drive death. It was easily RMA'ed (WD ftw).

What's the most common killer, though? Heat? Manufacturer defect(s)? What's everybody's opinions on which drives seem to last the longest? Feel free to speak your mind.

Just curious. :p
 
JaYp146 said:
What's the most common killer, though? Heat? Manufacturer defect(s)? What's everybody's opinions on which drives seem to last the longest? Feel free to speak your mind.
Click to expand...

Heat will do it if it's..well, too hot. Defects happen. Circuitry can get shorted and fry itself. If you're fortunate and the drive dies from "old age" it's hopefully because the moving parts eventually just wore out. Otherwise, it's usually one of the causes you mentioned.

I personally like WD for performance drives and Seagate for bulk storage. That's based on nothing other than personal experience. I know the data pretty much evens out on defectives.

/remembers the Great Defect Statistics Thread of '06
 
Baredor is 100% right..
Heat and you liking to touch it (static)

Bad airflow or high ambient temps...
pretty much the most common killers
 
Megalomaniac said:
Baredor is 100% right..
Heat and you liking to touch it (static)

Bad airflow or high ambient temps...
pretty much the most common killers
Click to expand...

K, that's what I thought. Just wanted to be sure. :D
 
Heat, static, power fluctuations (bad PSU or power source), physical impact (laptops and externals), power spikes (lightning, etc), flood, fire and plain old premature failure...
 
HDDs fail like everything mechanical does. Mishandling often decreases the lifetime. In the end, it's important to consider the precision that is required for operation at the same time as the cost of a HDD. I don't think people would be willing to pay ~2-3x the price for HDD that are more likely to last 10 years, especially not in the consumer market.
 
in my experience. my hardrives all fail because of heat, i just lost one more, this was on a raid 0 configuration, rip. now i just have one functioning a lonely 160gb, but, for how long? i am going to try again to have a raid array, this time i am going to buy 2 500gb that some people here recommend, supoused to run very cool.
i lost a total plus or less of 14 drives, i most be doing something wrong, maybe i let it stay on for more than 1 day at the time, i use my computer to much i think.
 
stopmenow said:
in my experience. my hardrives all fail because of heat, i just lost one more, this was on a raid 0 configuration, rip. now i just have one functioning a lonely 160gb, but, for how long? i am going to try again to have a raid array, this time i am going to buy 2 500gb that some people here recommend, supoused to run very cool.
i lost a total plus or less of 14 drives, i most be doing something wrong, maybe i let it stay on for more than 1 day at the time, i use my computer to much i think.
Click to expand...

Only thing I could suggest is a case that has fans providing good cooling to the drives. I have this case and love it. The main intake is a 120mm fan right in front of the HDD cage. Keeps Raptors nice and cool. I know it's relatively expensive for a case, but then so are 14 hard drives. :(
 
Yep, it's really hard to beat a Lian Li. That fan will keep your drives in top shape.
 
That masscool airconditioning must be what I'm looking for. I'll just duct tape all of my vents and slap it on. It's actually sensible in my case because I end up turning on the air conditioner because my pc heats up my room. I'm sure a mini air conditioner in the case will do wonders on my electricity bill.
 
I actually just had my 80GB Western Digital, the drive with the XP install, die on me yesterday. I'm not very thrilled right now, luckily my data was backed up on my other drives. I'm confident it wasn't heat, as like someone previously, my HDD rack has a 120mm fan pointed at it, so it might have been movement. Though...how much movement/shock a harddrive experiences by sitting on a desk is beyond me.

The drive won't even spin up to be detected by the BIOS at this point. Sucks. This is a good time for me to switch to an SATA2.0 drive I guess. Bye bye IDE.
 
If it wont spin up, then one of three things happened. Either your motor assembly seized, your read/write assembly seized to the platter(s) [pinching it like a frisbee], or the drive's circuit board took a dump. If you have another similar WD drive, you can temporarily put the suspected 'bad' board on the working drive (not the other way around) to determine if it is indeed the electronics. If the good drive doesn't spin up with the supposed bad board, it's the board. If it does spin up, it might begin clicking - no problem, just shut it off and put everything back to original config - then throw the bad WD out the window since you already have your data backed-up.
 
Drives die simply because they have mechanical parts that will eventually wear out. The motor, bearings, arm assembly all get a lot of use and eventually wear enough to cause read/write errors, or get stuck, rendering the drive unusable. Heat & shock also play a big part in the life expectency, but in the end it's mostly mechanical reasons.
 
In no particular order:

Heat (poor cooling, high ambient temps, etc)
Age (even with FDB motors and other improvements to reduce contact between moving parts, mechanical devices will eventually wear out)
Power (bad PSUs, bad current from the wall, etc)
Shock (poor packing/shipping methods like Newegg using peanuts, stock crews tossing retail drives out of the truck, etc)
Manufacturing defect (hey, it still happens)

You have control over the first, third, and fourth things I've listed. Attention to cooling to keep your drives below 40C, high quality PSUs with line conditioning, and care during shipping and handling will allow the vast majority of drives to serve quite well for years.
 
Yeah, I've decided not to even really try to recover the drive. I'm just kind of pissy because this drive was only 1 year old. I've heard Seagate has the best reliability at this time...that and the SATA Seagates I've been looking at have a 5 year warranty.

I'm thinking of using this old drive as a clay pigeon.

davidlem said:
If it wont spin up, then one of three things happened. Either your motor assembly seized, your read/write assembly seized to the platter(s) [pinching it like a frisbee], or the drive's circuit board took a dump. If you have another similar WD drive, you can temporarily put the suspected 'bad' board on the working drive (not the other way around) to determine if it is indeed the electronics. If the good drive doesn't spin up with the supposed bad board, it's the board. If it does spin up, it might begin clicking - no problem, just shut it off and put everything back to original config - then throw the bad WD out the window since you already have your data backed-up.
Click to expand...
 
this things you guys are talking about, breaking, old age. that's not true imo. a car moves 24 hours everyday, does it break in a week of use? of course if you t out the window maybe, this things are solid very difficult to break in normal day day use. heat is the main problem imo.
 
How many parts of a car are moving at 5400, 7200, 10000 or 15000 revolutions per minute with no replenishable lubrication or cooling fluids?
 
How many parts in a car are repositioned in less than 5 ms? How many parts in a car have tolerances less than the size of a speck of dust?
 
Megalomaniac said:
Baredor is 100% right..
Heat and you liking to touch it (static)

Bad airflow or high ambient temps...
pretty much the most common killers
Click to expand...

Dont forget stress on the HD, they are pushing these drives to do too much and are making them too big. But people want them so they make them and the drives get pushed to hard so hey fail.
 
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