How Long Will My Hard Drives Really Last?

Dear Lifehacker,I know hard drives can fail, but how long do they really last?

Will they last longer if I dont use them as often?

Lets go through each of them one by one.

Under Normal Use

Any hard drive in active use is essentially a ticking bomb.

If youre really lucky, itll be after youve upgraded to a new one.

Online backup service Backblazestudied the drives in their infrastructureand found about 80% of them survived for four years.

Similarly,the brand of drive you use makes a difference.

Seagate, for example,failed much more frequentlythan Western Digital or Hitachi drives in Backblazes tests.

Of course, all of this is average data.

Thats why its important to keep your systems backed up.

Again, things are different depending on whether youre talking about SSDs or traditional HDDs.

If your environment isnt climate controlled, well…just check that its climate controlled.

Solid State Drives: SSDs for archival purposes is a difficult thing to pin down.

That said, double-check you back up your data!

Sincerely,Lifehacker

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Illustration by Brian Hagen.

Additional photos bySimon Wullhorst,Chris Bannister,andwalknboston.