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life span of IDE HDs?

G

groovin

Senior member
One of our old servers is running IDE HD's. There isnt a whole lot of traffic through this server, maybe 500 megs a day. On average, how long should I expect these disks of this sort to live? I am replacing this server with a newer one using SCSI but I was thinking about using this server fosomerother small odd service so Im just curious as to what you HD experts out there thought of the life span. thanks for the input.


oh, they are all WD 15 gigs in this machine, probaly 3+ years old (not exactly sure because the other IT before me never kept any recs of anything)
 


<< About 37-38 months after date of manufacture... >>



In that case the hd's in his machines should be dying any day now. I'm thinking they are going to last quite a bit longer than that. In my experience they certainly do.
 
I think that it is hard to say the life span. 🙂

If it is a Maxtor drive, count on 6 months before it dies. 😉

It more depends on usage, than anything. I still have a 286 (running as a printer server)((for fun, what can I say, I'm a geek)) with a 90mb HDD running Linux. The 90mb drive is at least 12-13years old and running fine.

 


<< About 37-38 months after date of manufacture... >>



Maybe as an average but some will last longer and some shorter...where did this number come from? I would think that putting an actual global life span on a drive would be similar to being blessed with knowing how long YOU'RE going to live...
 
If it is a Maxtor drive, count on 6 months before it dies.

Wow, I guess that means the 4 Maxtor drives I have are the only good one's they ever made since they've all been running 1 year or longer. Or maybe you meant IBM drives...😉
 


<< I think that it is hard to say the life span. 🙂

If it is a Maxtor drive, count on 6 months before it dies. 😉

It more depends on usage, than anything. I still have a 286 (running as a printer server)((for fun, what can I say, I'm a geek)) with a 90mb HDD running Linux. The 90mb drive is at least 12-13years old and running fine. >>



uhmm... IMHO maxtor is the most reliable HDD u can get.
 
I couldn't disagree more.

I have had 7 replacement Maxtor drives in the past 4 years. The same drive just keeps crashing and they replace it and then it crashes again.

I had a friend that swore by Maxtor....He is now on his 4th replacement of his 40gb maxtor.

I admit, they have the best "No Quibble" guarentee around, but that's becuase they have to...Replacing drives so often, customers would get pissed if they didn't have that guarentee.
 
The best I can say is look into the manufacturers MTBF rating on the drives, that will give you a vague indication.
It really tends to vary so much though that it's hard to give an 'average'.

You'll come acorss some ill-fated drives like IBM's 75GXP, and WesternDigital's series of drives from a few years back that had the bad cache, and you'll occasionally come across some that will still be running perfectly 10 years later.
It just varies too much to give any real average date.

I'd say if it lasts longer then 1yr, then it will probably be good for roughly 3.5-4yrs of moderate usage in good operating conditions.
But like I said, it can vary significantly.
 
i have 2 maxtor drives. one of them is 3 years old. never had any problems with either of them. maybe you just have bad luck.
 
I have owned/purchased... about 10 Maxtor drives over the past 12 years. Almost all of them
were still in running shape when I last checked the ones I still own. Those that are not were
either well past thier operating limit, or something I myself fried in the course of upgrading - fooling around.

Several of the test servers we run at work use Maxtor drives, most these are running 24/7,
and some have been for a couple of years now (barring some holidays, and unexpected power outages).

Sites like Google.com rely on whole server farms using Maxtor drives to keep thier business running.

YMMV, but if I had 7 of the same component dying on my system over an extend period like you have,
I would've started looking at other factors causing the crashes, or at some point considered using
a different product.
 
I actually did give up on the Maxtor drive. It sits in my computer holding my MP3's and nothing else. I bought a 80gb Seagate and it's been going for 8-10 months with no "quibbles" at all. Wonderful drive.

I only figure it will be a matter of time before the Maxtor crashes again.
 
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