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Hard Drive that keeps going

P

pcslookout

Lifer
Does anyone else have a old hard drive that just keeps going ?

I have a old Hitachi 500 GB that is at least 4 or 5 years old. Maybe more not sure. I keep using it but for nothing that requires speed.
 
I have a couple 500GBs that are 6 years old (WD Greens) and a 1TB Samsung at 5 years.
 
I've got an old Maxtor 60G hard drive, probably from the late 1990's that still works but is not in a system. It has some old files on it.
 
My main external USB data drive is a Seagate Freeagent Pro, installed July of 2009.
 
I've got 16 2TB Seagates, most of them are over 5 years old at this point. I've got a bunch of 300GB SAS drives that are older but those don't really count.
 
Seagate 320gb PATA, ~70,000 hours
Seagate 500gb PATA ~75,000 hours
Hitachi 2TB 7k2000 ~57,000 hours

I run everything in RAID-1, so basically I don't care how old drives get. They run until they die.
 
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I just retired 5 servers from 2007. In the 9 years of service only 2 out of 24 1tb HDs needed to be replaced. They ran 24x7 for 9 years and the only time they stopped before being decommissioned a couple of months ago was when Sandy took out lower NYC. They are all WD drives with a May 2007 build date. I highly doubt the SSD drives in our new servers will last that long.
 
I've got an ancient WD 320gb drive with a broken SATA connector (pins are there, but the plastic is gone) that still runs like new. I've had it for 6-7 years, maybe?
 
I have a 2tb samsung running 24/7/365 in a nas since 2008.



but I need to check maybe 2009.

okay it is a synology diskstation. I may have a receipt.

Found it may of 2010 so 6 years and 1 month 24/7/365 in my garage which has been really hot since summer of 2012 due to mining.

and I still think it is older then may of 2010. i think it is the wrong receipt
 
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I have drives that are much older that still work, but are no longer in use. My juggernaut is a WD Green 640GB. I guess that puts it in the circa ~2009 era, been cycled on/off multiple times a day, every day since then. No funny noises, no bad sectors, just keeps rolling along.
 
Just counting, a majority of the HDDs I own excluding the HDDs in my server and maybe one HDD per workstation (less one) are sitting in hotswap caddies waiting for some need to swap them in. A few more are in anti-stat wrap in my parts-locker.

If I need or want to "build a new machine," I'll defer selection and purchase of any single HDD in the box until . . . well . . . whenever. Because I'll just grab one of the drives in the caddies and transfer it to the new system.

Between me and VirtualLarry or several others, this is the profile of accumulation that curses the longtime HW junkie and system builder.

Anyone ever try to figure out how much in just nominal dollars they've spent on this technology over the last 10, 20 . . . 30 years?
 
It depends on how you use them. With read intensive stuff, they tend to last.

I have a few older Hitachi Ultrastars that I've used like crazy in write intensive work that are still going.
 
It's a lot yet not a lot.

Consider it a necessary form of education expenses. Also altogether on a personal level, I doubt for most people (ie, 95%) it was not as much as the cost for one modern new automobile. (Maybe not even close.)

Oh ya, regarding HDD antiquity, they seem to last forever. The 1996 IDE 2Gb drives still are running.

Look on eBay and the Maxtor 30GB IDEes are trading close to their original (retail in-store) prices.
Used pre-flood (non-ATF) notebook drives (particularly IDE) host a smart premium (no longer made).
 
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CrazyElf said:
It depends on how you use them. With read intensive stuff, they tend to last.

I have a few older Hitachi Ultrastars that I've used like crazy in write intensive work that are still going.
Click to expand...

. . . and they'll last even longer for those purposes with a tiered caching program.

I still think I can count on one hand and < 5 the number that I saw "go south" before my very eyes. First was a 20MB WD drive. After that, a 2GB SCSI. Oh! My sister-in-law's HDD, but that was her own fault. And my 600GB Veloci-Raptor, replaced under warranty. Ironically, that one was also part of an ISRT caching configuration, but that particular size of the VR's had troubles, I think.
 
Nothing can kill this drive!
boxes_74gb_raptor_06-01-2016_zps13napttt.jpg
 
I recycle drives for backup duty, so plenty I own have been relegated to that role after a good few years' service.

I completely decommissioned a Seagate 120GB IDE drive and a WD 250GB SATA drive this year (too small for the desired role).

I bought a 60GB Seagate in about 2001, put it into a server at around 2003, which it ran in 24/7 until I replaced the server in around 2014.

My parents' PC has an 80GB Seagate SATA drive that dates back to 2007, that's been used daily the whole time.
 
2tb WD black for 5 years & still chugging along. It came with a 5 yr warranty as all WD blacks do. I think it still has a few years left in it.🙂
 
Recently fired up my old Amiga 500 at my parents old place.
It has one of these:
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a590
With what I believe to be a 40 MB WD hard drive inside.
Still worked fine.

Recently retired my WD SE16 640 GB which had been in use since ~2008 and also moved the 1 TB Hitachi to an external enclosure. So the oldest actively used internal drive is now a 4 TB Seagate from 2013.
 
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I still have an old esdi drive from the early 80s, 20mb.dont know if it works as I have no system to test it on.
 
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