Mostly likely time a hard drive will fail?

1. When booting the drive.
2. During operation - none/minimal activity
3. During operation - heavy activity
4. When moving/physically handling the drive
5. When newly bought - first time booting
6. Other?

My laptop hard drive died the other month while I was laying in bed using Skype and not much else. One other time a desktop hard drive died when I turned the computer on, and yet another time it was when I stupidly dropped the HD. I think it happens for a variety of reasons.

1. theo. no. when it boots it works, if not errors are displayed it works fine, check it later in the OS with a SMART tool to see if the tests run fine

2./3. see a harddrive is kinda like a lightbulb, it has a certain span of hours it will last. this is also said in the technical specifications and the manufacturer decides how long the warranty will last 2/3/5 years in most cases after how long he thinks it will operate with a (very)low possibility for it to fail beforehand. (failing and returned/RMA'd hdds are in his calculation)

4. NO! except it is done in a rough/inapporpriate manner
example: letting it fall, bumping it against other shit

5. NO! this is one of the rarest occasions a HDD will fail.
They leave the factory through a quality check that ensures it operates without problems. But ...theoretically it can happen.
Of course if a bad case of 4. applies where the transport damaged the drive... but I guess that doesnt count.

6. Aliens! The Apocalypse. Natural Disasters destroying your house. etc

I forgot to mention "heat" which is a serious 6.

if there is no proper cooling the probability of a HDD failing is proportional to the temperature...the higher it is the more likely it will fail

Yeah that's a problem. My HDDs always run 24/7, temperatures ranging between 38-52C. Some of mine are almost 2+ years old. I had only one drive fail on me so far, and it was No. 5 scenario luckily.

>>4 is right.

PROTIP: things get bigger when you apply heat. this applies moreso to metals, which are highly sensitive to changes in heat. this heat also burns off the lubrication that spins the drive, and since the platters are expanding, making the gap between head and platter that much thinner.

good news: hdds are almost entirely made of metal, making cooling easier. as long as your drives have some breathing space, and you dont but them say, directly over the video card, and avoid cramming everything into a tiny, poorly ventilated case, your HDD should work for well over 5 years.

the most likely cause, second to heat, is when the drives park and spin up, because thats when the head actually leaves the platter to go park (that way you dont kill a drive if you move it with the power off). this, combined with a warm or even hot drive, can cause a head crash, which is the nastiest of all the hdd crashes, because it almost garuntees some level of data loss.

mostly, there are three types of crashes:

platter seizeing(when the axel the platters are on wont let the platters spin) is also nasty, but that can ressurect it long enough to get your data off the drive by freezing it.
common cause: old age. lubrication wears out. heat warps the drive. anything that can move can corrode and wear out.

electric shorts(when the green PCB on the bottom of the drive dies) on the board are the least data-damaging, since those boards are, in an emergency, replaceable.
common cause: power surge/brownout/user error. this ones self explanitory.

head crash(the head on the tip of the actuator actually collides with the magnetic platter that holds your data at scale speeds of up to 300 miles per hour. not pretty.)
Common causes: abusive handling, drop while power is still on, old age (platters can loosen up over time, causing the opposite problem as platter seizing)

I work in a data center. We have 1400 computers...

PROTIP: There are two kinds of hard drives:
1: The hard drives that have failed.
2: The hard drives that are going to fail.

There are NO EXCEPTIONS
.
Backup your shit if it means anything at all to you.

1 is the most likely.  Hard drives can go on for years upon years, but if you turn them on, there is no guarantee they will wake up again.

I have an old Quatum Fireball EX6.4A hard drive been using for about 10 years so far and it still seems to run just like the first day of use, even after years and years and countless hours of heavy workloads it still manages to keep on chugging. Incredible, I say.

>>9
-incredible luck if your statement of a constant use is true
-crue design, modern drives are much more miniaturised and complex. -> more affected by heat and abrasion
like comparing a wristwatch with a sundial...oh well that is maybe a bit too exeggerated

>>10
Modern hardware is shitty because it relies on cooling.  My P2 is inherently cool.

My computer is so hot I want to fuck it

>>12
PEBCAK

>>11
I can keep my KIM-1 in direct sunlight for months on end and it won't even break a sweat.

When you drop it. Seriously, my portable just fell to the floor and died. Eh.

6: bitch slapping the entire case cause an error makes your cd not eject.

Works for me every time

>>1
6. Whenever you do something important for a change...

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