Why are hard drives so unreliable?

At a time when 1TB drives are a common sight in shop windows and catalogues, why is it that even the smaller drives like even the 250GB drives, are so unreliable?

Hard drives, it would seem, are so common to die off and take all your data with them.

I'm all for technology advancing and moving on, but can they not stop for a little while and fix this major issue?


I've had 2 1TB drives die off in the last 12-15 months (thank god for GetDataBack). A friend's 250GB died a few weeks ago and a different friend's 500GB went down the drain this morning.


Is there really not something that can be done in this area of computing? (I know, back up files, etc. but it's not really the point)

Cabaal

Hard drive has moving parts when compared to solid state, as like anything with moving parts the failure rate is higher when compared to something with no moving parts.

In relation to the life of a harddrive, to be honest it depends what they are used for (how much access) and how often they are on all the time or turned on and off, depending on this usage you might get 10 years or 2 years from a harddrive.

Some people also do very foolish things with hard drives including moving external drives alot whilst still switched on and spun up, this isn't going to help your drive unless it is designed to be used

If your worried about loosing data (first off you should be keeping backups), may I suggest a upgradeable RAID solution like drobo.com. Drobo FS is a good option http://www.drobostore.com/store/droboeu/en_GB/pd/CategoryID.28196700/productID.187232100

Hagar

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm all for technology advancing and moving on, but can they not stop for a little while and fix this major issue?

What major issue? Planned obsolescence. Business is business.

xsiborg

i had this very same frustration yesterday trying to explain to a customer why their hard drive had died, it wasnt some manufacturers conspiracy theory that the hard drive had died just outside the warranty, and it wasnt anything they did, it does just seem to a completely ramdom thing.

and not limited to any particular brand either, say i've replaced a couple of standard OEM 160GB hard drives in the last few weeks, but even there a few weeks ago a customer came to me with a HP laptop, only a few weeks old that the hard drive died in, so i sent it back to HP under warranty!

but i've had it happen with toshiba, samsung, WD...

*fingers crossed my two 500gb WD scorpio blue hard drives seem to be going strong in this laptop! :rolleyes:

mike65

I've yet to have a HD fail or even suggest it might.

pickarooney

Anyone use a solid state hard drive for an extended period? Been testing a couple in work but it's a bit early to draw any conclusions on them.

Voodu Child

I saw a short study a few years ago done using data provided by Google. Obviously with their massive data centers, they use huge numbers of hard-drives, so the data they provided made for interesting reading. Im sure you'd find it with google. I can't recall the conclusions, but I think basically a drive either failed very soon into its life (meaning it came from a bad batch), or else lasted a good few years (constant use) without giving any trouble.

With home users, I think basically there's two reasons for 'above average' drive failures:
-Bad batch of drives or low quality brand
-User error (moving external drives around while they're spinning etc).

Mr. Presentable

HDDs have been the most reliable component in my systems for the last ten or so years. Everything else has suffered a failure. I buy the best I can afford (whatever component) and treat them with respect.

Ghost Train

they spin very fast like a centrifuge, so when they get moved around or a knock it can damage the heads pretty easily.

Adyx

mike65 wrote: »

I've yet to have a HD fail or even suggest it might.

Same with me, in fact the only drive I've heard of failing was one in my sisters laptop.

When you think about it, the platters themselves are revolving at up to 10,000 rpm with a read/write head only nm above moving with a force of up to 550G :eek: It's amazing they are as reliable as they are.

tman

I've only had 1 fail on me, and that was almost straight away and was clearly due to it being poorly packaged (just chucked in a large box and sent via cheapo parcel mail)

People just don't seem to realise the intricacy of hard drives, just how close the head is to the platter...
I'd say 90% of failures are due to improper handling rather than bad manufacturing

One thing that never ceases to amaze me though is how rarely iPod hard drives fail considering what they go though...

probe

The larger the drive (non-SSD) the less reliable. The faster it spins, the more heat it produces and the more energy it consumes. Keep multiple bankups - including offsite backup, updated regularly.

If a drive goes and has valuable data that isn't backed up, try Spinrite to recover the drive. If/when the data is recovered, back it up and replace the drive.

SSDs are more reliable, and are generally much faster, but cost more and need to be backed up in any event.

Drives have error correction software which conceals tiny hardware failures from you until you reach a point where the error correction can no longer deliver. But they generally don't give you any advance notice of issues.

Typical of the companies that control this industry. Flaky.

http://www.grc.com/default.htm

Well I can only speak for myself personally, but the two 1TB drive's i've lost, were taken out of the package, plugged into the USB slot on my PC, and the only time they moved since was when they died, so it couldn't have been an issue with moving them around or anything.


My drives are always turned on though... would it help to disconnect them from the PC? (They don't always run at full power, they usually slow down or go into a sleep mode type thing, until I actually click into them, when you can hear them powering up again).

zodac

What make were the drives? I've got a Samsung drive here running 24/7 with no issues.

You might also want to look at how hot they're getting, and use a program like SpeedFan to get a S.M.A.R.T. check on the drives so you have some warning if they're going out.

probe

An item on Ars about drive reliability and replacing BIOS with EFI, Windows 7, drive structure, limitations to 2TB drive size in Windows etc...

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/why-new-hard-disks-might-not-be-much-fun-for-xp-users.ars

KAGY

I seem to be lucky enough with hard drives, I even have a seven year old one that has been moved into two new PC's and has been in constant use (has a swap partition on it)
I generally stick with WD, that might have something to do with it.

But still, backup backup backup, and then backup again.