HDD life span???

[bbcake009]

I was introduced to computer 3 years ago and of me being a newbe I would corrupt everything to the point the operating system would need to be reinstall. So every week my system is being reinstalled and it got to the point that I learned to fix my own computer...

Now, I defrag my drives pretty much everyday despite of me knowing that its not good to a hard drive... Pretty much, I stress my drives quite often and yet all my drives are all in perfect condition no bad sector or anything after 3 years... Makes me wander what other people do to their hd that after a year its dead....

So question is, is raid would be a lot more stressful setup for a hd? Lets say raid 0 with 1000gig X 6 no mirror just plain raid 0. Since I don't really believe about a hardware failure but I'll be happy to know the facts of the consequences of why the hd would fail... by the way, heat will not be an issue my case never get warm at all... will be the same setup inside a case...

 

[Rastalovich]

Nominal use - 5 years. (anything with electrical components has a life span of something like 8 hours a day x 365 x something x tolerance)

I've had ones last a lot longer, and those who've crapped after months. Same with anything really.

 

[SwaleSmith]

Your post is a little hard to understand it makes little sense...

If you had 6x HDD's in raid 0 thenI would imagine that it will be less stress as you will be spreading the load over 6 drives.

Not sure what drives you have but if there a good make such as WD or Seagate I seldom ever here of a drive failing, and why on earth would defraging the drive harm it???

Good Hard drives do not die in 1 year!!!!!????..... of course some are not so good but they should last many many years

 

[bbcake009]

thanks dude

 

[bbcake009]

Your post is a little hard to understand it makes little sense...

If you had 6x HDD's in raid 0 thenI would imagine that it will be less stress as you will be spreading the load over 6 drives.

Not sure what drives you have but if there a good make such as WD or Seagate I seldom ever here of a drive failing, and why on earth would defraging the drive harm it???

Good Hard drives do not die in 1 year!!!!!????..... of course some are not so good but they should last many many years

I am not really familiar to raid set-up so i'm not sure what is the impact that it will do to a hd... but thanks for answering the ???....

how about the samsung spin point F1 1000gig is this a good brand? it offers a lot more feature than seagate though....

 

[bbcake009]

many, many years like 5 years expected life? that doesn't sound much....

 

[nathan]

many, many years like 5 years expected life? that doesn't sound much....

You need to take into account at the speed which IT moves too. In 5 years time you prob wouldnt want a 1tb hard drive, it would be like using a 40 meg hard drive now.

How come you defrag everyday? i very much doubt your hard drives get that fragmented within a day. Prob do it once a month or something.

 

[SwaleSmith]

yes 5 years maybe more it depends on your use samsung spinpoint should be fine

 

[Rastalovich]

many, many years like 5 years expected life? that doesn't sound much....

A resistor will have an expectancy of 5 years. Capacitors too. ICs, transistors - all the things that go into making all things electrical.

They'll last longer or shorter depending on how much u use them. If u keep ur pc on 24/7, I'd be happy with 3 years, seeing as electrical estimates are made on 8 hour work days.

 

[bbcake009]

A resistor will have an expectancy of 5 years. Capacitors too. ICs, transistors - all the things that go into making all things electrical.

They'll last longer or shorter depending on how much u use them. If u keep ur pc on 24/7, I'd be happy with 3 years, seeing as electrical estimates are made on 8 hour work days.

how about heat... my drives without a fan the temp will reach 70-80 Celsius but with fan under 40 celsius....

 

[Rastalovich]

Operational temps will be on the back of the drive - or on the manufs website.

It used to be they had a 70 degree ceiling generally, but I think it's changed. The further and longer u stray from that operating temp, the shorter the expected lifespan will be.

Same deal with cpus, memory, anything, the expectancy is based on the recommended operational temp.

 

[bbcake009]

I get massive files everyday and moves to different drives.... that's why I defrag everyday if I don't it will take too long to finish. before took 3 days to finish, now its not that bad...

 

[Diablo]

70C drive temperatures, do you have them on top of a graphics card or something?

 

[bbcake009]

70C drive temperatures, do you have them on top of a graphics card or something?

check attachment picture... Stocking it together made it hot... but if I separate it not too bad 40-45c but I don't have massive space to separate 5 drives so putting a fan is a good idea...

 

[MeltedDuron]

am i the only one who's noticed that you're planning a 6-disk raid 0 array? with raid 0 every time you add a disk you multiply the failiure rate, as if any drive in a raid 0 array fails you lose everything on the array.

your drive temperatures are shocking too, you're lucky to have drives last that long! if you're backing up your data elsewhere or you dont value it at all then go ahead with the raid array, but you're asking for trouble even if you used enterprise class WD drives. If you can afford to half your capacity, raid 10 or maybe an intel matrix raid setup would be a better idea, otherwise stick to single drives, you arent really missing much! (I've got a dell poweredge with 6 10krpm scsi disks in it, I've played with raid, its overrated!)

 

[bbcake009]

am i the only one who's noticed that you're planning a 6-disk raid 0 array? with raid 0 every time you add a disk you multiply the failiure rate, as if any drive in a raid 0 array fails you lose everything on the array.

You are indeed right... But w/ all the torture I did on my HD I never had any that fail me all still working like brand new.... Also one of the person here (YOUNGIE) said that it would not be hard for HD to be on raid 0 because the workload will be spread to different disk so this means the hd on raid will last longer than using a single drive...

O.k. besides of hardware failure what else can corrupt the raid setup?

 

[bbcake009]

You need to take into account at the speed which IT moves too. In 5 years time you prob wouldnt want a 1tb hard drive, it would be like using a 40 meg hard drive now.

True indeed, but remember the 1TB first came out it like $800 now its only $99... My point is whenever there is a new technology it will cost an arm and a leg

 

[leslie]

If you're looking at RAID for redundancy and not speed, how about a Drobo?

Use cheap drives. One fails, pop in a new one, parity for fairly large/full drives takes about 24hours. No knowledge of RAID required. Mac, Windows, or Linux. 32bit or 64bit. Network, server, or personal use.

Just an idea.

 

[JN]

In my experience you can't put any kind of lifespan on a hard disk - it's almost like trying to say how long you will live. You could live another 60 years or you could die tomorrow.

Hard disks don't like being powered on/off lots as it reduces their lifespan, but similarly they don't like being left on 24/7/365 as they have a tenancy to seize up when they finally do get switched off. They don't like being overly hot, nor do they like being too cold (according to Google's tests).

Therefore, sticking six of them in a RAID0 array is just begging for trouble and I personally wouldn't consider at all unless I had a backup of the data elsewhere.

Take for example the OC3D website. We value the data on there so not only does every server run RAID5, but it also performs a backup every night to a different PC and once a week all backups get transferred off-site.

Hard disks are like women...temperamental and untrustworthy

 

[Diablo]

On the plus side, if you forget their birthday, they don't mind too much. 6 hard disks in RAID 0 is asking for trouble. Of course you might get lucky and it all works fine, but that's a bit like not saving for a pensions, because ou hope to win the lottery.

I was going to suggest a nice RAID 5 array, which should be doable on most decent motherboards.