Windows 7: HD And Memory Sticks; Life Of ?

Hi,

My experience with Hard Drives from Seagate and WD are that they last about 3 years or so.
Possibly an even shorter time.

This seems to be true irrespective of whether that are running continuously, or just plugged in for the occasional backup (like for an external HD).



What's you experience ?

Anyway, do these USB Memory Sticks like from Sandisk "tend to" last longer ?

Or,...?

Thanks,
Bob

I won't buy anything from Sandisk after they weaseled out of the warranty for a failed camera card.

I have had many hds over the years all makes and lucky to say none has failed they just got to small.

Me too! I run a small local Computer Club that has been going now for just over 8 years and I can't remeber one member who has had a HD failure! Perhaps we have been lucky

Three years is very short, especially if you have been seeing it consistenly. That makes me think you aren't properly cooling or handling your drives.

So far as quote:
Anyway, do these USB Memory Sticks like from Sandisk "tend to" last longer?

I have always regarded USB memory sticks as a temporary device to hold info for onward transfer. I would never use them for a "permanent" storage medium. A "proper" HD eems much more reliable, preferably an internal HD. Even better an SSD!(says he 'cos he has just got a new rig with an SSD)

USB memory sticks, SD memory cards, MicroSD memory cards do not have the long life that true hardisk/SSD drives do. They are designed to be cheap and portable. When they fail they usually give no warning signs. They are never to be trusted with important data you have as your only copy.

Hdds are mechanical, it's not a question of IF they will fail but WHEN.

That said, I have a few hdds that are 25+ years old that are still functional but I've also had hdds fail within 6 months.

It is my experience that the newer hdds seem to be pretty reliable, I can't remember when the last time was that I had an hdd fail in a desktop. I have a couple of IBM servers I use for my work that have been continuously running since 2003 that have never had the hdds ever even hiccup.

The last hdd I had fail was in a laptop about 10 years ago. Laptops are subjected to a lot more thumps and bumps so that makes sense.

I agree with DeaconFrost that 3 years seems a little on the low side, you may need to look into why they are failing that quickly.

As far as flash drives, I've had pretty good luck with them, have never had one fail, I'm more likely to lose them than have one fail.

Very true. And no matter what media is used to put data on, multiple backups are vital to ensure against the loss of that data. A bare minimum would be two backups, on on-site and one off-site.

I had a Maxtor in my first desktop that lasted seven years, most of that being 24/7 usage. I had two Seagates fail, one after a year of use, the other one after a month. One WD failed after a year. All were desktop drives. I've had three netbook drives outlive the netbooks they were in (I still have the drives).

I've also had good luck with flash drives with only one ever having failed: a 16 GB SanDisk SD card that failed three years into a five year warranty that Sandisk worked hard to find a lame loophole to use to weasel out of honoring the warranty (there is NO way I'll ever buy a SanDisk product again).

I have about 15 drives in service here--both IDE and SATA, some as old as 10 years--all but two external and hot-swappable that are used for backups. In the past 15 years I've had maybe 5-6 HDD's fail, four of them expensive RE2 and RE4 WD enterprise drives that you would expect to be more durable, while the cheaper drives seem to do better. My oldest drive has a date of 2003 on the label and until recently has been in my clone mix, which is a bunch of external drives that I rotate to clone my C: drive once per week. Since building a new desktop I'm now only using five SATA's for this purpose and the six IDE's are currently not in service. I'll find something to do with them, though.

I find that drive life is not something you can predict, either by brand or price range, as a drive may be DOA when new or last for years. The average return rates of HDD models vary, a case in point being the aforementioned WD RE4, which has a worse-than-average rate. Oddly, it's one of the most expensive drives you can buy, designed for 24/7 server duty. That said, I have one still running in my new desktop build, but like everything its contents are backed up in multiples.

As for drive durability being related to the type of duty, i.e. turned off and on routinely or run 24/7, I haven't seen any evidence that one procedure results in longer life than the other. I turn my computers off every night and usually run them all day once booted first thing in the AM, but a friend keeps his runing 24/7. Our HDD failure experience has been about the same over the last 25 years.

I have a few thumb drives here, one Verbatim 256mb stick that's probably 5-6 years old, and all work fine. I have used compactflash cards in cameras professionally since moving to digital photography in 2000 and have never had one fail, even the cheap ones, and consequently have no experience as to one brand being more reliable than another. Some of my friends are loyal to one brand, usually one of the more expensive alternatives like Lexar, and they too have had no trouble AFAIK.