![]() Nor is the MTBF a warranty - it is representative of the relative reliability of a family of products. ![]() This is not the case! The specification is based on a large (statistically significant) number of drives running continuously at a test site, with data extrapolated according to various known statistical models to yield the results.īased on the observed error rate over a few weeks or months, the MTBF is estimated and not representative of how long your individual drive, or any individual product, is likely to last. It is common to see MTBF ratings between 300,000 to 1,200,000 hours for hard disk drive mechanisms, which might lead one to conclude that the specification promises between 30 and 120 years of continuous operation. It was originally developed for the military and can be calculated several different ways, each yielding substantially different results. MTBF is a statistical term relating to reliability as expressed in power on hours (p.o.h.) and is often a specification associated with hard drive mechanisms. ![]() To address issues of reliability, Seagate is changing to another standard: " Annualized Failure Rate" (AFR). MTBF has proven useful in the past, but it is flawed. Most will probably outlast spin drives and are better in laptops because they don’t suffer from g force drops or temp issues.Seagate is no longer using the industry standard " Mean Time Between Failures" (MTBF) to quantify disk drive average failure rates. I have not had much experience with long term SSD use, but the consensus is mostly that they only have so many read/write cycles and that they age differently depending on quality of drive. Many times data recovery in such cases is either impossible, or very expensive to achieve. I would say its better to be safe and replace the drive before experiencing a major failure. I do have to say from several reliable sources that it appears after 15,000 hours of use or 4 years you are on borrowed time. I’ve had zero problems with my 7200rpm desktop drives one at 20,000 hrs and one at 12,000hrs. Desktop drives are obviously benefiting from a better environment and are not faced with space constraints. I generally feel laptop drives and external drives have a more hostile environment to work in and are subject to more shock and temp fluctuations. In my experience I have had hard drives in the 20,000 hours still working great and others with 4,000 hours that up and died. And as we’ve already mentioned in our previous article on defragging your drives, you can turn to the program SSD Life, which is also free. Now that you’re terrified, don’t you want to know how many hours your own drive has been working? CrystalDiskInfo is a free app that tells you exactly the number of hours your drive has been working, as well as other data such as the number of sections replaced or the time of startup, values that serve as a barometer of the status of your drive. Nevertheless, their life cycle is estimated at more than 10 years, many users have seen their drives’ reading and writing speed reduced after only two years. The life of a Flash drive depends on your level of use, the amount of information stored on it, and obviously the quality of the drive itself, with an abyss yawning between standard SSD discs and those used in servers. With the arrival of SSD (solid-state drives), the lifespan of drives has considerably increased, although there is still a lot of fine print on this issue given that this technology is practically still in nappies. Another thing to keep in mind is that the greatest failure rate occurs in the long tails: during the first year of use and after the fifth. In net hours, a hard disk has a useful life of 20,000 hours, meaning that if you leave it turned on constantly, it will last a bit longer than two years. Thus, the best way to measure this is by number of hours in use. Although each manufacturer claims a different lifespan for its products, on average a hard drive usually lives for between 5 and 7 years, although this depends on how you use it: it’s not the same thing to use it a few hours a day as to keep it switched on for very long stretches of time. To check the number of operational hours left in your drive, there are programs such as CrystalDiskInfo.įor magnetic HDD discs, there are several related studies that pinpoint certain key periods in the life of your device. Although there are exceptions to every rule, you have to keep in mind that a hard drive has a limited lifespan, meaning it’s worth your time to crunch the numbers to see if your unit has lived out the useful phase of its life cycle. Your hard drives are your adoptive children that you need to care for meticulously for the sake of your saved data.
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