Hard drives that will not die

I hear hard drives with liquid bearings re expected to live for only 5 years.  What are some hard drives known to last for a looooooooooooooooong time?

wow, 5 years? that sucks.

what if you barely use them (like an external back-up drive)?

What you're asking brand and model or type of drive? All current platter based hdd are mechanical component so down the line it will break down eventually.

Here are some random questions.

Which brand/model is known for its quality and long life span?

What is the most feasible backup solution for a home desktop of a 4channer?

Should I set up a raid 0 or go for something like 01 or 10?

For some long term quality archiving, should I do dvd, hd, tape, flash, etc. backup? I need my stuff to last forever or until I die.

>>4
Quantum / Fireball lol

USB memory stick or external drive

01 and 10 are better for data security, but that comes at a price.

Well DVD would be the easiest but it wouldn't neccesarily last all that long. Tape perhaps, or HDD <- put that away in a good place with the right humidity and it's gonna last quite a long time.

>>2
If the drive doesn't get that many work hours it is gonna last quite a long ass time. I have a Conner CFS210A drive, it's like210mb and goes along quite happilly. Has moderate work hours.
I also have a WDAC22100 which has a lot of work hours but works fine. One thing with them tho, drives don't like power cycles a lot, it can cause them to break earlier.

For a main work computer is it better to leave a harddrive running forever until it dies or should I keep turning it on and off only when I use it?

good hd brands:
 Seagate - they've been making hd's since pc's were invented
 Western Digital - I have one in this machine now and I originally bought it in early 1999.  Been running about 16,800 hours according to SMART status.

bad hd brands:
 Maxtor - they're cheap for a reason
 Quantum - same company as Maxtor

Less power cycles is better, but you don't have to run it 24/7. That's probably not all that good either, the more hours it has worked the more likely it's to fail next time you power cycle. Best turn off computer for night but keep it on if you are only going away for a short period of time. That way it's the better balance for saving power and not straining the drive motor too much by spinning it up.

Take that as you will, I can't prove it scientifically. I myself just leave my computer running all year round, and the same 60gb maxtor has gone trough an early Pentium 4 and an AMD Athlon in the last 4 or so years without ever giving up. For me power and noise isn't an issue.

>>7
Don't take that SMART power hour count very seriously, it's not neccesarily accurate. 1 drive I have, the power on hours count is 2046 and the drive has been working practically non stop for years (only maintanance = off for few hours).

Then comes the big one, Power on hours count : 82649. Been working for just 1 year or so. Acually different SMART reading utilities give an even more generous power on hours count for that bastard - 534094 lol.

Most SMART attributes are relative, i.e. they have an absolute value and a threshold, and a good SMART utility will normalize it to something from 0 to 100 and tell you where you are in this range.

>>1
My fujitsu scsi has been quite satifactory over the years. 10K RPM
and its still even 5 years old. Still works and never needed to be reformatted since the first time.
MTFB--thats what your looking for in a drive.

UGH, MTBF- Mean Time Between Failures. I belive my MAN-3735 drive is something like 10,000 hrs? 100,000hrs? Designed to be obsolete before it fails.

oh my bad, its only 1,200,000 hours.

>>5
truth

the only time i ever had a quatum drive fail is because it got lemonade spilled on it.
>>7
quantum ruled untill they got over about 40gb and/or when maxtor bought them, just fyi
>>12
lmao, 136 years. i have a seagate full heigh SCSI drive that had like a 400k hour MTBF. i actually had to hit the thing with a sledge, with the lid off, to kill it(pc recycling place would only take dead drives and i had no room for it :\)

Keep in mind that MTBF is a statistical quality-- with a distribution curve. A high value might seem great, but you also need to know the standard deviation.

Maxtor = shit  (had 2 maxtor 80 gigs, both died on my after 1 year or so of heavy use, got a product exchange for Western Digital drives instaed from Gateway back when I used OEM computers)

Western Digital = Descent/Mixed bag (out of 5 drives, the 700MB from the win 3.1 days died miserably after 2 years of light use, an 80 gig died on me, and the other two 80s and the 120 are fine and have ~3-4 years on them now though one of them is emmitting a high pitched whine)

Seagate pwnz me.  20GB, 40GB, two 200GB, three 250GB.  4 years, 4 years, 2.5 years, 2 years repectively.  No deaths and no signs of dying, all completley silent.  5 year warraty on the new drives (200 & 500s) that comes default.  Not sure about the old ones.

Dont settle for maxtors shitty 1 year and sometimes 3 year warrantys.

I am from the Harddisk industry. The one that limit the harddisk life time is actually not the Fluid Dynamic Bearing Motor, but the lifespan of the head. GMR heads usually only last about 3-5 years. I really recommend people to change their harddisks every 5 years. Anyways, the capacity of harddisk will be more than 8x every 5 years and you will be tempted to replace it.

>>18
Take your planned obsolesecence and shove it.  If a company can't make durable goods, screw them.

>>18
lol talking to yourself

>>17
I come from the internets myself.

Maxtor seem to be more of a hit and miss to me. I've owned 2 of 9th generation DiamondMax drives for a couple of years and they have given absolutely no problems. And I've not kept them in a closet either, been working 24/7 since I bought em.

>>21
Your Maxtor's will fail in 24 hours.  I guarantee it.

Seriously though, the reason why I am scared of Maxtor's is that the one place I worked at used Dell computers, and every time I checked the device manager (out of pure curiosity, I swear) it was always a Maxtor HD, and they would always fail every couple of months.

However, my girlfriend's computer has been running solidly for a couple of years on a Maxtor.

Nonethless, I wouldn't buy one.

>>22
Hahaha, My old PC has a maxtor that's been in service for 10 years. Stop scaremongering ppl.

>>22
Dell could've gotten a series of faulty Maxtor drives

>>23
[high-pitched whine]
[scraping sound]
Operating system not found.  Press any key to retry.

>>18
PARADOX

The first HDD I purchased was a MaxtorSATA, failed within a year. Upset and unaware what caused the crash I purchased ANOTHER MaxtorSATA and was more then pissed when that one crashed within 2 MONTHS. I am never buying another Maxtor again in my life, I am currentely switching off both maxtors. When one crashes I reinstall windows on the other and keep the recentely deceased one in storage. I've been switching off between the two for about 5 months until I can purchase an immortal Western Digital drive. Number of crashes = 4

>>25
Nope doesn't happen at all. Never went to a reformat either. LOL.
Besides that symptoms maybe you're confusing my 10 yr old Maxtor  with you IBM Deathstar?

>>17

Ya, I can believe that the heads might be on the verge of going any day now. It could have a few more years in it depending on the head technology though. As I heard MTBF is a game where they run X thounsands of drives over a so many hours to equal 1.2million hours. There was the 4 corners test as well. 10% high voltage, 10% low voltage, 10% high under the hottest temp. allowable and 10% low under the coldest temp. allowable

MTBF is one of those games they play but even playing that game its hard to deny that kind of reliability. Enterprise class hardware is almost always superior to retail hardware.

Anyday though my heads will just give up :/

>>23
Yeah. My computer's hard disks are both maxtors, one 80GB the other 120. I've had the 80GB one since July 2003, and it's still working absolutely fine; no problems at all. The 120GB drive is pretty new; I got it in September 2005. It's been working great so far, too, though I haven't had it for so long.

Whoa! PENIS.
The lands of penis... PenisLands.

Let the Maxtor bashing continue.
If you can believe it, purchased a retail Maxtor 40GB only to find an 80GB inside.  Dead silent within 2 years.