HArd Drive LIfe, etc about Hardware

Hard drive life.... I had a hard drive last me for 4 years and it crashed last month. I've been thinking.... how long will my new one last. It is one of those Western Digital 120Gb and I use it about every night to every over night( about 4 hours-------9pm-12pm). Oh, and before my first harddrive died, my floppy drive made this really loud annoying clicking (it did this like 10 times, when i turned it on and off.) Is that a sign of it's life? cuz it is kinda doing that now, but a not a loud click, a normal one.


Please reply, I need some help, much thanks
Totheend

Grumble Grumble Grumble

It seems like 4 to 5 years is normal for HD life now a days. Western Digital warrenty is 3 years for the commercial duty and high performance (8MB cache) models and one year for the desktop grade EIDE drives...
http://store.westerndigital.com/product.asp?sku=2328181

The noisy floppy drive is unreleated to the HD failure, but it does sound the floppy drive is on it's last legs as well. If the floppy unit is over 4 years old too, you should make plans to have a spare unit available just in case...

While a lot of people might not agree with me, and I don't have any technical background to prove this I'll say that it's not wise to constantly keep your computer on it just kills everything faster

I'm on the same guidelines as LenMiyata, 4-5 years with a high level of usage. This is the minimum working age for home use. If the usage level is lower, though (like on my '96 Pentium), the HD will last longer (9 years and counting). Making frequent backups, though, is the only way to avoid large (non-financial) damage acquired through HD crashes.

As for HDs in general, the quality seems to have come down a bit since the late nineteen-nineties. This could be, on the other hand, because of the larger capacities etc. that use the HD more (data physically more close/tight than on the earlier drives resulting in a bigger propability of some kind of failure).

As for Pyoro-Pyoro - The HD (and some other things in your PC) has (have) movable parts, that, when used, will degrage to a point they're no longer usable. Using your HD (and PC in general) always shortens its lifespan. But there's no point in not using your PC because of being afraid about the future, is there?

As for the FD Drive - I'm thinking the same as LenMiyata - prepare to get a new one, weird sounds from moving parts inside the PC are not exactly signs of something good. It might not be broken yet, but it certainly looks like its going to be in the 'one foot in the grave'- condition soon.

[EDIT]
When did I delete that word "degrade"?
Gosh...
[/EDIT]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JEEB

As for Pyoro-Pyoro - The HD (and some other things in your PC) has (have) movable parts, that, when used. Using your HD (and PC in general) always shortens its lifespan. But there's no point in not using your PC because of being afraid about the future, is there?

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I totally understand where you are coming from jeeb, but what I meant was I see some of my friends where they would just leave the computer on at night (could tell from their aim away msg) and they said they would do it even if they were not downloading anything. That is very questionable to me of why one would want to do that

I have an old PC and the HDD in it is about 10 years old. Not big on space but the computer still runs. lol but yeah Flppy is going too

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pyoro-pyoro

...That is very questionable to me of why one would want to do that

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Actually if they're running web/ftp/whatever servers that's understandable. But if they don't do... Well, that it's a bit less understandable, though not that harmful to the PC. Actually there'll propably be less dirt (dust) in the PC because of the fans being on all the time. Then there's the fact IMs dont save the messages you receive, unlike email. Who knows, but this is going a bit off-topic.

So it's not a problem to keep your system up for long instances of time. If there're checkups on the PC's health every now and then (once a month or something), that is.

you can always set your computer to power down your hard drives in the power options properties in windows after a certain amount of idle time.

on a side note, i leave my comp on all the time. there are times at night where i don't have any downloads going but i still keep it on at night. i do it mainly so i can listen to music at night.

there isn't enough proof that leaving the hard drive on all the time will decrease the hd's mtbf. there's computers out there used as personal storage servers that last well over 5 years, however those computers may also be using older drives that were well before the time when storage capacity were ramping up quickly.