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How often do Hard Drives fail???

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big dainjerus

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 9, 2007
168
0
I know it is just common sense to do everything to prepare for a possible HD crash, but how often does this really happen? I have only had imacs, ibooks, and powerbooks, and have never had an issue. But sometimes the idea of HDs crashing gets thrown around here like its a sandwich and a normal occurrence!!!

All this RAID talk, backing up to externals (and hearing about those crash a lot), it just always seems like every HD is on the verge of exploding! Like you have a piece of gold because it didn't fail on you yet! Is the science and technology behind them still not to the level we would want them to be, or is that impossible? What about HDs makes them more likely to fail than anything else?

With 4 HDs going to be in place for me, are the chances pretty high that at some point at least one of them is going to take a dirt nap? Or are there some guys that never, ever, have a problem with HDs? It seems that everyone always has a story about some HD that acted a fool.
 
I'm that guy. I've probably lost aboout 10 HDs over 10 years. All different situations. My last one was on my MBP a month ago. Clicked twice in a row, real fast-like, in Safari and WONK!, total lock-up. Salvaged about 80% of my stuff via DiskWarrior. Luckily I'm organized and had most stuff backed up. The replacement drive Apple installed started making crazy noises about 2 days ago. I do video work and typically push the drives pretty hard if that matters.

big dainjerus said:
I know it is just common sense to do everything to prepare for a possible HD crash, but how often does this really happen? I have only had imacs, ibooks, and powerbooks, and have never had an issue. But sometimes the idea of HDs crashing gets thrown around here like its a sandwich and a normal occurrence!!!

All this RAID talk, backing up to externals (and hearing about those crash a lot), it just always seems like every HD is on the verge of exploding! Like you have a piece of gold because it didn't fail on you yet! Is the science and technology behind them still not to the level we would want them to be, or is that impossible? What about HDs makes them more likely to fail than anything else?

With 4 HDs going to be in place for me, are the chances pretty high that at some point at least one of them is going to take a dirt nap? Or are there some guys that never, ever, have a problem with HDs? It seems that everyone always has a story about some HD that acted a fool.
Click to expand...
 
Can't say for macs as I've been a PC user for the past 22 years, but I'm sure it's about the same. I have had well over 200 HD's at the least 30 of them have crashed. Sadly it seems that the majority of them where Western Digitals. Perhaps I just hit a bad bunch or something. I had 2 Maxtors, and 1 Seagate fail on me that I can remember.

Modern drives seem to fail more often then the older ones. Perhaps it's a trend; I don't know. All in all I wouldn't worry about it too much. I find that most drives that are going to fail will do so before the warranty is up. :)
 
Bought my computer in 2001. First hard drive died in August 2004. Ever since then, almost like clockwork, I have had one drive or another (internal or external) die within the last 5 months of the year. 2005, 2006, and 2007.
 
big dainjerus said:
I know it is just common sense to do everything to prepare for a possible HD crash, but how often does this really happen? I have only had imacs, ibooks, and powerbooks, and have never had an issue. But sometimes the idea of HDs crashing gets thrown around here like its a sandwich and a normal occurrence!!!

All this RAID talk, backing up to externals (and hearing about those crash a lot), it just always seems like every HD is on the verge of exploding! Like you have a piece of gold because it didn't fail on you yet! Is the science and technology behind them still not to the level we would want them to be, or is that impossible? What about HDs makes them more likely to fail than anything else?

With 4 HDs going to be in place for me, are the chances pretty high that at some point at least one of them is going to take a dirt nap? Or are there some guys that never, ever, have a problem with HDs? It seems that everyone always has a story about some HD that acted a fool.
Click to expand...

They are a mechanical part.

All you can really do is avoid buying drives that are known to have failure issues and have a backup system in place.
 
I don't think I've ever had a drive fail on me. Never the less, it can and does happen to people frequently, which is why I still put 2 x 750GB drives in just to have a full backup of one to the other. It might be hard to justify the cost of 2 drives when you're only getting the use of the space from one, but if/when a drive does fail you'll be very glad you spent the extra on having a backup. Especially given the increasing amount of prized personal data everyone keeps on computers these days (not just work, but almost more importantly music, and very importantly irreplaceable photos).
 
I've had wayyy to many drives fail on me, but i backup frequently so its not as painful. Also, most of my hard drive setups have been raid 0 arrays which are pretty risky as it is.
 
Hard Drives are generally pretty reliable, but the old axiom holds true:

There are those who have at some point lost all their data, there are those who are, sooner or later, going to lose all their data and there are those who religiously make backups....

Which one are you? :p
 
big dainjerus said:
it just always seems like every HD is on the verge of exploding!
Click to expand...
Might as well pretend like this is the case. :) A HDD only has to fail once for you to loose all your data (if you don't backup). And besides the DVD drive and fans, it's one of the few moving parts, obviously a critical one too.
 
I think about 2 years ago, I had four hard drives die on me within one month. Lost tons of data.

I see hard drives fail all time. I have helped lots of friends replace drives in their laptops. I can't wait until solid state hard drives become the norm.
 
I also lost 4 HD's within 3-4 years. A couple were the IBM deskstar AKA "deathstar".

Not sure how much this design defect at one of the major manufacturers skewed the data, but nevertheless you should BACKUP and plan for the time when your hard drives fail in the future.
 
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