Hdd Doesn't Want To Fail?

I realise I should be gratefull, but after reading how HDDs and SSDs can fail after 3 years, I don't understand this.
My HDD is 11½ years old and I turn the PC on & off everyday.
These are what HDD Sentinel Professional and Speccy shows.

 

Making a hard drive fail is easy. Simple put a copy of a file whose contents you absolutely cannot live without (like your tax records the week before deadline), and permanently erase all backups.

HDD failure is now guaranteed.

 

This is a data drive, not a boot drive?

 

I don't accept this premise. Anything "can" fail after 3 years. Anything "can" fail after 3 days. That does not mean it will or should.

There are computers that are 10+ years old that have never failed and never even been opened up once for cleaning still chugging along with some generic, barely adequate PSU too.

When it comes to hard drives, since my first over 25 years ago, I can remember only one actually failing. ALL drives will fail - eventually - if given time. But by far, most are retired before they die.

If me and I were you, I would be worried that drive is now jinxed just because you said something about its longivity!

 

This reminds me of what our lecturer said more than 30 years ago. "If an electronic component can last for 24 hours, it will last for 24 years." Of course, that was before everything was engineered to last x amount of time.

 

Boot drive. Partitioned with Windows 7 and XP.

 

That was pretty much true and still is today. Even cheap electronics today are very reliable and typically, if it is going to fail, it will on first power up, or within the first few hours of use (traditionally known as the "burn-in" period). If it makes it through the burn in period, it typically can be expected to last a "normal" lifetime.

In the olden days, all factory made computers were put through a burn in period after assembly and before shipping. But this was a very expensive ordeal involving lots of logistics, man-hours, space, and more. But as raw materials became purer, designs more robust, assembly techniques improved, failure rates dropped drastically so it was no longer financially efficient to burn in every unit that came off the line. And that is even more true today.

I don't buy into the concept of planned failures - not by the engineers anyway. The marketing weenies and bean counters may certainly buy inferior (less expensive) components with looser tolerances that don't last as long. But if something fails before its time, it is likely most consumers will buy a different brand next time - and tell their friends about it too. Even the marketing weenies and bean counters understand the need for brand loyalty, repeat customers and the importance of word-of-mouth advertising.

I think the lesson learned over the years is don't buy the entry-level budget (and generic) models and the chances are your devices will become obsolete due to advances in technologies and standards long before they actually fail.

 

This is interesting in that warranty periods have decreased because of the above mentioned.

In 2002, I bought a Dell Dimension 4500S desktop computer. It's warranty period was 3 years. I recently bought an Inspiron laptop and it's warranty period is one year (perhaps because it's a laptop and not expected to last as long?).

 

I don't agree with that conclusion. The computer industry is very competitive with consumers demanding faster systems with more power at cheaper and cheaper prices. Note this chart that shows the Consumer Price Index for personal computers (the bottom red line) has dropped a whopping 96% between December 1997 and August 2015! When a company used to make $100 profit on a $1500 computer, now they might make $5 on a $300, much faster and more powerful computer. Their only hope for survival is to sell mass quantities.

Longer warranties would result in higher initial costs that would drive many buyers to a cheaper brand. Many folks will buy a different brand just because of a few dollars difference in price without even looking at warranties.

And in your specific case, it is not fair to compare a PC, a "fixed" (not mobile) computer with a notebook (mobile) computer as the keyboard and mouse are likely the only components to be physically abused with a PC.

BUT more importantly, the warranty depends on the model. I note the Dell Latitude 13 7000 series all have 3 year warranties with onsite/in-home service (after remote diagnosis) and onsite/in-home service is NOT cheap.

And, extended warranties are big profit items so companies, including Dell, would rather sell you the computer at a lower price with a shorter warranty if it means you will not buy a HP or Acer - then sell you an extended warranty. I see Dell offers extended warranties up to 4 years - and that warranty includes if you drop and break your notebook, or spill your coffee with cream and sugar in it - hardly quality related faults.

There have always been products with short warranties and products with long warranties. It all depends on how much the consumer wants to spend, and how well consumers do their homework.

Look at these two 1TB, 7200 RPM, SATA 6Gb/s, 64MB cache WD disk drives. Virtually identical specs but the WD Blue for $50 comes with a 2 year warranty and the WD Black for $70 with a 5 year warranty.

Note Samsung SSDs. The Samsung 850 PRO SSD comes with an amazing 10 year warranty! But their cheaper 850 EVO "Vertical" line only 5 years, and cheaper still, 750 EVO only 3 years.

The bottom line still remains the same. Companies don't want their products to fail premature because they know consumers will flock to a different brand. So if their goal is to stay in business for the long haul, and thrive, they strive to reduce production/manufacturing costs, lower prices for consumers, while increasing reliability.

Also, we must NOT confuse advancing technologies and the "state-of-the-art" with "planned obsolescence". Having to retire perfectly functional consumer electronics before they die because the technologies have been superseded with more advanced technologies is just a fact of life.

Planned obsolescence - the idea products are "designed" to fail after X amount of time - is just a myth. The big, fat, heavy, power hungry analog CRT monitor didn't die, it was pushed out of the way by the flat, light, energy efficient, digital LCD monitor. Our small capacity, slow EIDE (PATA) drives didn't die, they were pushed out of the way by large capacity, faster SATA drives. Did suddenly all VCR machines stop working? No - DVDs were far superior and more convenient - and more durable too.

 

I believe that is Murphy's Law #156

 

Last I checked, there is only one real Murphy's Law - but it still applies here!

There's probably a "Confucius says...", a Mark Twain quote, or a Rodney Dangerfield one-liner about tempting fate somewhere that fits Mimsy's comment. The only problem with Mimsy's comment is it implies there are backups. Yet sadly, most people temp fate again and assume they will never need them.

 

FWIW I don't want the HDD to fail. I'm just curious. Especially since my PC is turned on and off everyday. And why newer HDDs are failing.

 

Except not all brands of HDs are failing at higher rates than in years passed. And within the same brands, those rates vary widely by drive size. I think it "appears" drives in general are failing at higher rates because there are just more computers out there than there ever was so the numbers may be going up, the "rate" or percentages are not.

Another problem related to perceptions may have to do with external drives which I "perceive" (judging by forum complaints) to have high failure rates. But I note many of those are actually due to USB interface problems skewing the results and not actual disk drive failures.

Check this out: http://arstechnica.com/information-...uper-reliable-seagates-have-greatly-improved/

 

I'm picking out only this quote, though your entire post was spot on. You did forget something very important though: A longer warranty results in having to cover the costs of support for a product for much longer.

That means a lot more than the people who answer emails and chats when customers try to contact support. It means the cost of developing and testing firmware updates and software utilities. It means the cost of obtaining and storing warranty replacements for the entire warranty period - if the warranty is three years that means three years after the last one was sold to a consumer, not three years after the last one was manufactured. The alternative to stocking replacements of the original product model is to give every customer who needs a warranty replacement a free upgrade. Aside from the obvious drawback of what happens when proof of this juicy little fact hits Reddit, every upgrade-replacement is technically a loss to the company. that is now one less product that can be sold for a profit, becuase we had to send it out at no charge (with free overnight shipping, while eating the cost of getting the failed part back to us as well) to someone who's still within the ten year warranty some idiot in marketing thought was a good idea.... *eyeroll*

 

Right! And products can sit on the retailer's shelf for years.

I've seen this on motherboards a lot because motherboard makers come out with so many different models, keeping a large inventory of legacy models is an expensive logistics nightmare.

Yeah, every RMA is a loss to the company, whether the product is repaired or replaced with a like or newer model. But the alternative is a mad customer who not only does not come back, but tells all their friends who to avoid.

This actually goes back to why I am a loyal Gigabyte customer. Years ago when even top-of-the-line motherboards were plagued with leaky capacitors, I had a Gigabyte board that developed leaky caps. I contacted Gigabyte and they replaced the board for free even though it was already 4 years old - a full year past the 3 year warranty. I was impressed and have stuck with them as the primary supplier of my boards since. So yeah, replacing the board was a loss for Gigabyte, but keeping me as a customer telling my happy-ending story has paid off for them in the long run.

 

I'm just curious. After 11 1/2 years of comp time - you do have a backup or image of this drive /partitions? When failure happens 11 years is a lot to lose.

 

To be fair, most companies factors the costs of a certain number of RMAs into the cost of doing business. The reason the cost of a customer service center is a part of that is because customers these days have Twitter. And as Digerati pointed out, angry customers lead to the indirect costs of lost business as well.

 

I have all the original Windows and MS Office disks, including an ISO backup of each disk, all the downloaded programs are backed up, as well as my private files including bookmarks. I also have a bootable backup of Windows that includes only the latest motherboard drivers. Anything else I can download.

 

And so do you feel your backups are as infallible as this particular hdd. I've heard of the silicon lottery, maybe you hit the hdd lottery!

 

Nope.
But hardware and software can be replaced, likewise movies and music.
However, there's no replacement for personal files - especially photos. 2-3 backups is the only safeguard.

 

How I wish my company's customers realized that...

 

A few years ago I had a backup sata hdd holding 12 years of personal files. It died. I was unhappy...
s.