Do you regularly replace your hard drives every X years?

[Nvidiaguy07]

In the midst of a main components upgrade pretty soon. I know all hard drives eventually fail, so should i just plan on eventually replacing my hard drives that are starting to get old?

I run my OS on my SSD, and everything is is on either a 1tb wd black 7200rpm drive, or a really old 640gb drive. Nothing on there is super important, and is replaceable, but it would be very inconvenient if those drives failed.

I've heard people upgrade every 3-5 years. Do you do this? Or should i just not really worry about them, and just assume when they start to fail that ill know and ill be able to copy over anything.

From my experience, I have had a few drives fail on me, but i feel like age didn't have that much to do with it. In fact they failed more when they were newer than anything. I have many old computers with REALLY old hard drives in them that are still working.

Like i said all my REALLY important stuff in backed up in dropbox, and super important things are also in my email. With the current prices of hard drives, ill probably end up waiting a little more anyway, but im just wondering if anyone else regularly gets rid of old hard drives.

 

[Anteaus]

Oddly enough I've never had to replace a harddrive for any reason other than replacing it with a larger capacity. Only one exception being when I switched from IDE to SATA, and even then i still kept the IDE drives around as backup drives for awhile. i guess I've been lucky.

I've been using only Western Digital since the mid 90s and have never had a drive fail. Naturally, since I'm tempting fate with this post I'll need to pay more attention in the near future!

 

[pauldun170]

In my experience, upgrades fell in line with tech developments being pressure cooked with too much crap on small drives
100->133 (that and the old drive had filled up)
4800->5400 (that and the old drive had filled up)
5400->7200 (that and the old drive had filled up)
IDE->SATA (that and the old drive had filled up)
SATA 1.5 to SATA 3 (Ended up building new from scratch and wanted latest and greatest...drives were on sale)

 

[Elixer]

It highly depends on your usage patterns, and your current backup strategy. I always have at least one backup of 'it would suck to lose this' to multiple backups of 'there is no way in ... that I can live without this data'.

After 2-3 years, I tend to mirror the drive to a new drive, after I have given the new drive a good workout for 30 or so days.
With the current HD prices though, that figure tends to slip to 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 years.

 

[Jman13]

I have generally replaced my hard drives eventually, mostly due to essentially useless capacity more than anything. I have yet to have a hard drive fail on me, though. (Knock on wood). I used a 6.5GB Seagate for 6 years before retiring it, a 20GB Maxtor for 5 or so. I recently retired a 200GB Seagate I had been using since 2001 with my latest build last month. I pulled a 5 year old 250GB WD drive at the same time and replaced both with a 500GB two year old drive that saw extremely limited use as a media PC hard drive. Currently, my system has that two year old drive, a new SSD, a 5 year old 500GB WD drive and a 2TB Samsung drive that is about a year old. My larger capacity drives are replaced more often, actually....I have 1.3TB of photos, and as that space has filled up, I upgrade size and move the old photo drive to my office for off-site backup (and usually put it in an external enclosure at work. I have two 1 TB drives that are 3 years old both in external enclosures (one at home, one at work), and a 500GB drive sitting in a drawer at work.

Since I have all my really important data (and all my photos) backed up via cloud backup (CrashPlan), I have given thought to putting my two 1TB drives back in my main machine and adding a SATA card (all my motherboard sata ports are in use now)...I might do that if HD prices don't drop back in price soon.

 

[corkyg]

I have 3 active computers. 2 floortops and 1 laptop. Each has two duplicate OS drives and a data storage drive. I rotate the OS drives every week by means of power switches. The OS drive then runs 24/7 for a week, and then gets a week off. The data drive are all identical as well. All are backed up by 3 cloned external drives.

The only time I upgrade or change is when the drive reaches 60% of rated capacity. BTW, the laptop OS drives are 320GB Momentus XTs, and the data drive is a 500GB Momentus XT.

 

[Binky]

I replace when the drive:
1. Dies
2. Gets too noisy from age
3. Is too small or too slow compared to new drives

That's it. I don't think replacing an old drive is a good idea, if your only reason is the age of the drive. An old and reliable drive is probably less prone to failure than a new drive.

Want to buy some old IDE 7200.7 and 7200.8 drives? These suckers just refuse to die.

 

[Zap]

I do replace them, but not because of worrying about their lifespan but more because of advances in capacity and performance.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I sell off my drives after 4 or so years, and upgrade them.

 

[exdeath]

I replace them any time there is something faster.

I've always been "I/O aware". I'll RAID drives for speed alone even when I don't need 50% of the capacity of a single drive.

I had first generation Cheetah X15 18GB drives in RAID 0 on my personal desktop, and I went Cheetah/Raptor/Cheetah/Raptor every couple years when a new generation model was significantly faster.

I'm all SSD now, 5 out of 6 of them are SF2281 with 32nm toggle NAND, unsurprisingly.

I will upgrade when something significantly faster comes out, which will be a VERY long while considering the Chronos Deluxe/Wildfire class drives are doing 200-300 MB/s 4K random and SATA 6g is the main bottleneck.

I've never replaced a drive for space or because it failed, only due to I/O performance increases.

 

[Smoblikat]

I have 3 active computers. 2 floortops and 1 laptop. Each has two duplicate OS drives and a data storage drive. I rotate the OS drives every week by means of power switches. The OS drive then runs 24/7 for a week, and then gets a week off. The data drive are all identical as well. All are backed up by 3 cloned external drives.

The only time I upgrade or change is when the drive reaches 60% of rated capacity. BTW, the laptop OS drives are 320GB Momentus XTs, and the data drive is a 500GB Momentus XT.

Does it automatically alternate every week, or do you do it manually? Also, what switches would you use for that?

 

[zCypher]

In the past, only replaced when broken (many years usually). Lately, I have not been able to help myself. When I was lucky enough to get a 60GB SSD as a gift, I could never go back. I replaced it with a faster 120GB, and then with yet a faster 240GB. All within a relatively short period of time (let's say about a year). None of the SSD upgrades were out of necessity, really - I could still be working with the 60GB just fine, but... the upgraditis got me. I am weak.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Well looks like im not alone in basically never replacing drives, unless something better comes along.

In the past, only replaced when broken (many years usually). Lately, I have not been able to help myself. When I was lucky enough to get a 60GB SSD as a gift, I could never go back. I replaced it with a faster 120GB, and then with yet a faster 240GB. All within a relatively short period of time (let's say about a year). None of the SSD upgrades were out of necessity, really - I could still be working with the 60GB just fine, but... the upgraditis got me. I am weak.

How much difference have you seen in your newer faster SSD? Mine is pretty old, and i was considering selling and getting a new one.

 

[Jman13]

Well looks like im not alone in basically never replacing drives, unless something better comes along.

Yeah...hard drives just seem to last. I really contemplated keeping that 11 year old IDE drive in my i5 build, but since I had an extra 500GB SATA drive laying around I figured I'd finally retire it just to avoid having my IDE controller card and the flat ribbon cable in the case. I have to admit part of me also didn't want the drive to suddenly fail, but 11 years of essentially 24/7 use didn't kill it...still was working as well as the day I got it.

 

[Anubis]

i replaced all my IDE drives with SATA drives when sata came out, since then i only add too the colection if i need more space, if i say replace a 500GB drive with a 2TB drive i put the 500gb on in the JBOD array

 

[bigi]

I have 3 active computers. 2 floortops and 1 laptop. Each has two duplicate OS drives and a data storage drive. I rotate the OS drives every week by means of power switches. The OS drive then runs 24/7 for a week, and then gets a week off. The data drive are all identical as well. All are backed up by 3 cloned external drives.

The only time I upgrade or change is when the drive reaches 60% of rated capacity. BTW, the laptop OS drives are 320GB Momentus XTs, and the data drive is a 500GB Momentus XT.

I find it weird. HDDs are meant to be spinning all the time. I'd never give a HDD "week off" and rotate as it will bring it quicker to failure. YMMV.

 

[Burner27]

I regularly replace my HDDs/SSDs when I can see a 'tangible improvement' in my system with the addition of said HDD/SSD.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

I have maybe 10 old drives on a shelf from all the drives that I have replaced over the years for being too small or IDE when I moved to SATA. I think that the smallest one that I still have working is a 13.5GB drive from 1999.

I have had 2 HDD fail on me over the years and both of them were out of warranty in both cases. The last one was two weeks outside of the warranty when the arm let go. Lucky I back up not only to an external drive but to second drive that I keep in a safety deposit box at my bank so I didn’t lose much.

 

[corkyg]

Does it automatically alternate every week, or do you do it manually? Also, what switches would you use for that?

In my Win7 floortop, I switch using SATA mobile racks.

The XP system uses a simple rotary switch that puts power to A, B or A+B.

My laptop I simply replace the main internal HDD with a duplicate already mounted in a spare caddy. It is a single, captive screw operation.

 

[corkyg]

I find it weird. HDDs are meant to be spinning all the time. I'd never give a HDD "week off" and rotate as it will bring it quicker to failure. YMMV.

I don't buy your logic. My evidence is to the contrary. These drives have been running that way for over 5 years, and never a problem. The real reason is not to "rest the drives,' but to have a reserve drive ready to go should there be any trouble. No restoration needed - just switch and go.

 

[evident]

I find it weird. HDDs are meant to be spinning all the time. I'd never give a HDD "week off" and rotate as it will bring it quicker to failure. YMMV.

Hers some anecdotal advice to back your claim. I had a wd raptor running for about 3 years and my machine wasalmost always on besides going to sleep. I was gone for 2 months and when I came back the drive started to fail on me. I was able to luckily still be able to access and back up though

 

[bryanW1995]

It highly depends on your usage patterns, and your current backup strategy. I always have at least one backup of 'it would suck to lose this' to multiple backups of 'there is no way in ... that I can live without this data'.

After 2-3 years, I tend to mirror the drive to a new drive, after I have given the new drive a good workout for 30 or so days.
With the current HD prices though, that figure tends to slip to 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 years.

My wife has a crap ton (800gb +) of irreplaceable pictures that fall into the "no way in... that I can live without this data" category. We keep one copy on our 3tb external, one copy on my 2 tb wd green, and another an older usb 2.0 1 tb external. Planning to move the older external to another location, and will eventually put the wd green into my office computer so that the info is backed up in 3 separate physical locations in case of fire/lighting/etc etc.

@OP: all of my old drives still work. Still have my ~ 10 year old 36gb raptor running my mom's computer like a champ, plus several wd6400aaks and a couple of 500gb seagates lying around, too. As I transition to larger ssd's + mass storage it will be interesting to see if I'm able to continue to find a use for these older drives.