Hard drive failure rate

Question

I hear many stories from people on the community forums here as well in real life about how they've experienced some sort of hard disk failure.  What is the fail rate of these drives?  I have a hunch many of the issues people are experiencing are software related, virus/spyware etc, and it's just easier for tech support to swap out a drive, thus removing the offending software.   I'd be interested in hearing the community's thoughts on the matter.

gdwrnch3 · Answer

I haven't lost a hard drive since 1995

ejn63 · Answer

No one outside the drive makers themselves keep stats on drive failures. The failure rate for drives a couple of years old or less should be only a couple of percent - but multiply that by millions upon millions of drives and the numbers aren't insignificant. Some drives (IBM's Deathstar 75GXP and 60GXP) were known for very high failure rates. So too are many pre-Seagate takeover, late-model Maxtors. Every drive company has at one time or another produced a run of drives with a high failure rate.

dougery · Answer

http://www.storagereview.com/comparison.html

This site has a pretty comprehensive listing of HD information (user submitted) including some information on failure rates, but you'd have to do some digging. You'll have to sign up (free) to access the information but I have found it very useful.

I'm sure you're right about viruses, but I would be willing to bet that with the types of super suped up systems running these days, that heat (due to poor ventilation) is actually killing a good portion of these drives.

Message Edited by dougery on 05-22-2007 10:29 PM

Storage, Drives & Media

Hard drive failure rate

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