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How long does it take a dying HD to die?

D

Doomer

Diamond Member
I've got a Seagate ST31000 520AS that according to HD Sentinel has 154 bad sectors, 21% remaining health and 55 days estimated life left.

At least a year ago the stats were exactly the same. This drive has media on it and gets used most every day. Of course I don't store anything critical on it but I can't help but wonder how long a drive like this will actually last in a stable condition before it finally slides into the abyss.

And I'd like to add that it has never given any indication of a problem whatsoever. Were it not for diag programs like HD Sentinel, I wouldn't there was anything wrong with it.
 
Could die next minute, could last another couple years. SMART errors aren't really that helpful except to tell when to get a replacement drive, from what I have read they do not provide accurate EOL estimates. Does it give SMART errors in another scanner or is it only HD Sentinel?
 
You can only make a partially educated guess based on the rate at which errors are occurring and how much space is set aside in reserve to use as bad sectors are identified.

If you care about the data, replace it now.
 
If you were planning to move your data to a new hard drive in two weeks, the old hard drive would last thirteen days.
 
I have a wd laptop hard drive from 2007 thats been flagged as dying or in danger of dying since 2009.
It was dying until about 2012 when I replaced it with a SSD.
Now it just sits on a shelf.
I do occasionally power it up to look for stuff.
Its been awhile since I looked at it and I can't remember the exact imminent death codes.
 
Doomer said:
I've got a Seagate ST31000 520AS that according to HD Sentinel has 154 bad sectors, 21% remaining health and 55 days estimated life left.

At least a year ago the stats were exactly the same. This drive has media on it and gets used most every day. Of course I don't store anything critical on it but I can't help but wonder how long a drive like this will actually last in a stable condition before it finally slides into the abyss.

And I'd like to add that it has never given any indication of a problem whatsoever. Were it not for diag programs like HD Sentinel, I wouldn't there was anything wrong with it.
Click to expand...

I have a 500GB Samsung that has been dying for 2 years now but if I hadn't checked the SMART report in HDTune I wouldn't have known the difference.

I just keep it as the scratch and temp disk on the desktop and just don't plan on storing anything permanent there. It'll probably outlast everything else I have.

There's no way to know.
 
Had a HDD that after a year the bearing was going out and it sounded like a can of rocks being shaken.
Flipped it over and it went silent, Lasted another 3 years.
 
SMART data according to Google is all but useless for predicting actual failures of drives. It shows you when a minor event occurred that didn't kill it but it has no practical benefit for predicting the drives future life. HDDs just die, unexpectedly and without any warning. If you get a warning at all, a different noise etc and you have something that isn't backed up well then get on and do it ASAP and get a replacement.
 
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