How many hard drives have failed on you? Do you remember the models?

I keep buying external backup drives, but NOTHING EVER HAPPENS. I feel like hard drive failure is overblown or mostly due to user error. Feels like I'm throwing money to the wind.

Internals:

• 1TB Seagate Barracuda - I've had this one since Fall of 2011. I don't access it very often anymore, but it's still part of my PC.
• 3TB Seagate Barracuda - Had this one since May, 2014.
• 6TB WD Blue - July, 2016.

Externals:

• 3TB WD MyBook - July, 2015.
• 4TB WD MyBook - Auguest, 2016.

And I have an SSD for my system drive, but that hardly matters, since SSDs are much more resilient.

NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.

Never, strangely.

How many have you had, if you don't mind me asking. How many years are we talking overall?

@cmblasko: Same, it's fucking weird!

A friend of mine lost literally thousands of SNES, NES and Genesis ROMs when a RAID array failed.

Same, even my 5 year old WD portable USB 2.0 HDD is still chugging along fine.

*knocks on wood

A western digital raptor but those were 10k rpm and now there are ssds to possibly fail, so... My parents had some 7200rpm one fail at some point, might have been a Quantum Fireball. Never had a 7200rpm or 5400rpm drive that I personally bought fail.

Never. I thought a Western Digital Black I had failed once but it turns out it was the SATA cable. I honestly don't know why I've been so lucky.

The first computer we had when I was growing up had an 80GB hard drive in it. No idea what brand it was, but the other parts in that computer started failing before the hard drive did a whole decade later.

I had a laptop hard drive start to fail on me five years after I bought it. This was a college laptop, though, and it often got shuffled around, sometimes in a book bag, and often while still turned on. These days, I have a laptop that I move around a lot, but it only has a 256GB SSD in it.

Still, you should be wary of any hard drive that is older than three years. If it's older than five, keep the things you value - pictures, documents, that sort of thing - on something else.

A 2tb Seagate that was my main drive. It started chugging real bad, like real bad. Luckily got my important things off before it went to the big server rack in the sky.

Or, you know, be a normal, smart person who values their important data and back it up! ;-)

It still blows me away how many people I work with who have used PCs or Macs for 25+ years and refuse to see the value of backups, even after frequently losing their data.

Honestly, that's the only suitable solution. Brand new platter hard drives tend to either fail almost immediately, eventually die just after the warranty expires, or last a very long time (there are graphs you can see for a given brand/model, and the above is shown in the graph due to failure spikes at certain time or active usage intervals. Many platter drives that make it through the first year tend to last quite a while in a stationary system.

However, you can never be sure, so you just need to backup your important data, preferably off-site, and never make decisions based on your guess as to the history of actual usage of the drive - at least until after you're backing things up and maybe just want the convenience of not having to go through the hassle of restoring the data when a drive fails that you should have retired or should have been using for unimportant stuff because it's well-used or many years old.

I've had several fail on me. I had four or so of those awful 3TB Seagate drives (ST3000DM001) fail, though all but one was still in warranty. I've also had two Seagate 3.5" external drives die on me (I think both used those damn ST3000DM001 inside though). I've had a few portable externals die on me as well from Lacie, Seagate, and WD, but they all got moved around a lot and lasted for three or so years anyway. I think I have about 15 drives that are in active use, and another five or so that I use occasionally. That's not counting SSDs or console drives. If I include them, then it's probably closer to 30 total.

Never had a hard drive fail on me, either. I've had two 1 GB Seagate drives in my tower for years, and that's not to mention the dozen or so laptop and family computers I've used since I was a child.

@ezekiel: Over the course of 15-17 years, roughly:

3 hard drives from desktop pc's (parents' when i was younger and my current machine)

2 laptop hard drives

3 work desktop pc hard drives

2 work laptop hard drives

2 external hard drives

If you count consoles:

3x Xbox hard drives replaced (I modded them, shhhh don't tell anyone)

Ps4 stock hard drive

I'm sure I am forgetting some, but yeah never once had one fail on me.

@ezekiel: Hard Drive failures are a weird thing, since if your drive doesn't fail within the first year (or first few months) it is likely to go on for something like 5+ years with no issues.

I have WD Green 1TB that I have owned for something like 7 years now and it's been faultless. On the other hand, when I rebuilt my PC a couple of years ago I bought a brand new 2TB WD Black drive. That shit failed withing the first month of use! Luckily I had all the files I copied over still backed up on an external drive, but it was a real bummer.

I RMA'd the drive and got a refurbished one in return. It makes annoying ticking noises when loading data which is probably the read/write head hitting the side of the case (usually a sign of impending failure) yet it's been solid for 2 years, so I've given up worrying. The only other headache is sometimes renaming folders makes Windows Explorer crash, which I assume is related to it being a little iffy. Has no problem writing or reading data day-to-day though.

Personally, next time I rebuild my PC I'm gunna go out of my way to get a 1TB SSD so I never have to deal with hard drives again. The noise and failures are enough to make me willing to pay extra.

@ezekiel: That same 1TB Barracuda died on me a few years back. Microcenter had a half off sale or some such discount and shortly after getting two of the drives one of them sputtered out. I'm poor and haven't had money for another hard drive but 1.2-ish TB isn't really cutting it these days.

My mother had a drive that failed a while back that was some 40-ish GB IDE nearly 20 years old. I've given her hand-me-down builds cobbled from some of my older systems over the years and was blown away when I realized that was the same drive from when I was a child.

Had a WD fail once over a decade ago. And a seagate 6-7 years ago, but that was my fault as I was copying over a huge ammount of files from another hdd, and since it took a long while I got bored and decided to check my computer case for dust behind the motherboard, which meant I had to flip the computer over (technically I could have just turned it, but I'm dumb). So I went down on my knees, flipped the case over on it's side, and my blood froze. Looked up on my screen and witnessed the outcome of my mistake. Turns out what is basically violently shaking your hdd while it's writing large amounts of data might physically wreck your hdd. I was sad.

No failures, but I broke three drives by dropping them: One 500GB drive that came in an Iomega enclosure, one of those WD Passport thingies that was 500GB, and a 1TB WD Blue that took a bad bounce off my bed while cleaning my desktop last July.

Never had a HD crap out but I build a new PC every three years or so and the old HDs just end up with holes drilled in them. Maybe if I kept them longer they would have an opportunity to fail.

My machine has four drives. The oldest is a 250 gb HDD that has lasted me ten years now. The hard drive before that worked fine, but wasn't sata, so I had to give it up after an upgrade. My first computer had a Pentium 75 in it and I've had one ever since and never had a hard drive fail.

I have been using computers for over 30 years now and I have never had a hard drive die on me I have had one external drive die on me back in 2008. It was a 1 tb Lacie fanless external drive and I used to have one that took an extra couple of seconds to spin up (WD Black).

Edit: I am also the kind of person who uses their computer until it falls apart. I have burnt out 4 mainboards, 2 video cards, 4 monitors, and countless mice.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I never RAID my hard drives? I dunno.

I've had a couple seagates fail me, my external one is also going crazy too. Had one WD black completely die on me

Last hard drive that failed on me was part of a PC project from my father's work somewhere at the start of the new millenium. Failing mouses though.. lost 2 razer mouses in the last 5 years. I guess that's on me for buying Razer products.

Recently, No hard drive failures. Only an 8 gb USB failure from Usbest Technologies apparently. It was a non-branded USB stick that turned 'RAW' . I managed to find the ProductID and VendorID to unleash some russian technology on the stick. It somehow worked out, but after a week suddenly 2gb of storage dissapeared , so i used the same program. Now the USB stick is as dead as it can be :)

Had a Seagate drive go bad on me 8-ish years ago, been using Western Digitals since (reds lately) and have never had a problem.

I remember having trouble with Seagate drives long ago, but after being burned by that one failed drive I switched to Western Digital HDDs and have not looked back.

Strangely enough the last drive to somewhat fail was a SSD, but I don't think the drive itself was failing as was the controller. Sometimes it was there as if nothing happened other times it was not. Had a hell of a time figuring that out, was second guessing SATA cables, my external drive caddy, the motherboard, you name it. But all signs kept pointing to the ol' OCZ Agility 2 90GB, bought it around 2010 and primarily used it as an OS drive for quicker boot times. Thankfully I managed to pull most of the data I wanted off of it before shelving it completely.

I've only ever had one start to fail; a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB, after a little under three years. The laser started to fail, but luckily I caught and diagnosed it early enough that it was just being slow and throwing errors, so I was able to back up everything to another hard drive. The Caviar Blacks have a three-year warranty, so I was able to send it in and get a replacement.

The other WD Caviar Black that I bought at the same time (7+ years ago), the replacement Caviar Black (5ish years ago), and a later Caviar Black (4 years ago) are all still working fine, as is my Samsung 850 Pro SSD (3+ years ago).

I know a several different people who have had Seagates go bad on them, but I'm the only person I know who's had an WD start to fail. Anecdotal, but take that for what you will.

Just once, I can't remember when anymore, but it was like a 25GB Maxtor drive, electrical failure in the houser caused the damage though.

Once, this morning :(

Never had a hard drive fail me. Always used Seagate for what it's worth.

I think only 1... maybe 5 years ago. Had dozens of PCs between my home and work. My problem is never really the hard drive.. now SOUND on the other-hand, boy oh boy.

Every IBM Deathstar drive has died on me. When I get rid of drives, I usually dban them if I can. Then, I open them up and physically maul the platters. Then, when I was living in an apartment, I'd drop it down the garbage chute. I lived on the 10th story and those drives made the best sound when they slammed into the dumpster. I didn't need to on some of the Deathstars as the platters had shattered into thousands of pieces.

Had a handful of Seagate drives die on me. On one bad streak close to a decade ago, I had a 200GB seagate die after a month of use, I got an RMA and that drive died after 3 months of use, I got an RMA of that one and it died after 3 weeks. Seagate sent me another drive and told me this would be the last one and that I needed to replace my Seasonic PSU. Switched to a WD and it's still running in an external enclosure.

Been exclusively using WD since. Still have 75 gig raptors that still work. I haven't had a WD drive die on me yet, but I do replace and clone my drives every 3-4 years and do regular backups to my NAS which is just mirrored. Then another copy of that data sits on a drive at my parent's house. Had a WD 1TB black that I thought was dying. It was when I started to really get into using Lightroom. Wasn't the drive dying, just me being used to SSDs...

No SSDs have died yet. I avoided the whole Sandforce ordeal and managed to flash the firmware on my Crucials before the data just went poof.

no home drives in 22 years - uhh like 80-100 at work over the same period - 30-40 of them were older wd 80gb drives, a few 80gb seagates, and some 500gb ibm/hitachis that died in first months of service. rest were older scsi and sata server/san drives

The only one I specifically remember was from an IBM Deskstar line that later got renamed the Deathstar for their infamous and widespread click-of-death. It's been a long time since that happened, though; since the shift to SSD for a lot of my storage, I don't think I've had a drive really go bad.

I've had pretty good luck with hard drives. I end up retiring computers before the hard drives go. Except for my current computer has a 1TB Seagate BarraCuda that's in the process of shitting the bed.

Not a single one in 17 years. Which is why I didn't use that many to begin with. I think I never changed HDDs in my first two PCs and the two laptops I owned. I'm currently on my third Desktop PC and have used three HDDs (replaced one 1TB with two 2TB drives) as well as three SSDs (original 120GB replaced with two Samsung Evo 500GB drives). Only ever switched/added stuff for the additional storage, not because an older drive malfunctioned.
However, I do remember my very first external backup drive (it was this fucker, to be precise) not only dying on me eventually, but never really working all that well to begin with. So, it did happen to me once. Myth not busted.

I'm still using a Western Digital from the summer of 2013.

Cant recall models. Think two have failed on me in about 30 years. Ones that did failed under the typical 3-5 year warranty life span. Typically I find 99% of PC parts out last their use. Failures typically must have had manufacturing issues from the start. About only other thing thats failed on me was a bad motherboard.

I haven't had a drive go bad on me in at least 15 years. The two 1TB WD Blacks in my gaming machine are 7 years old and humming along just fine. I'm planning to replace them soon, but only because I need more space.

None in the past decade at least. Maybe back in the 90s when I was basically frankensteining machines.

A co-worker had an M2 drive fail in his Del laptop after less than 6 months.

The drive in my last laptop died after 3 years, I have no idea what brand or model it was.

My SSD (SanDisk Ultra) died 3 months ago due to my motherboard fucking up. Luckily it was still under warranty so I'm getting a replacement free of charge.

That is all I can remember.

Now, you wanna talk about bad RAM? Holy fuck I've had some RAM die on me. I've gone through 8 different sticks of ram in the last three years. Granted, I think that was mainly due to my old motherboard, so hopefully I don't have the same issues with my new motherboard.

Never. I had to recover the data off of a family member's drive that failed but all of my HDDs, SSDs, and external drives are still working. I just replaced my internal drive with a bigger one but the other one showed no signs of failing. However, I've read that you should change them every five years to be safe.

I've had a WD fail about three weeks after we purchased it, and some Seagates which failed at random times.

Nothing recently though, I think I've gone at least a decade without losing a drive. That probably means I'm due (but I keep two copies of everything I care about at home and another copy at my parents who live on the other side of the planet, so my data should be fairly safe not just from hard disk crashes but also larger disasters :).

For hard disk reliability I always look at what Backblaze publishes: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-benchmark-stats-2016/, although I really don't act on it and just buy whatever non-Seagate I can get for a reasonable price.

Watch as I condemn my SSD to death by saying that in my 20+ years of computing, I've never had a drive catastrophically expire on me, and I've owned a good few in my time.

Had some drives that started to get that gravelly crunch to them, but most have been replaced and recycled before out right failure.

Woot! Deathstar owners unite! Of course I had one and it is probably the only one that truly died on the job.

Had a Seagate that showed signs of dying, so switched it out before things got worse.

Have been rotating drives before they actually give me trouble ever since so these are the only recorded causalities.

None that I can recall. That includes my personal machines, and a dozen or so desktops, three rack servers, and a six-disk NAS at work. One server has been running on the same hard drives since December 2007!

Wait, that's not true. I remember now, we did have one drive failure at work. It cost us about $4,000 to get the data back because we didn't have any backups. My predecessor wasn't very good at the IT portion of the job. That's probably why he's gone and I inherited it.

I've only had one fail on me, but that's all it takes. I wasn't backing up anything, and it set me back quite a ways.

Edit: It was a Western Digital brand, don't remember which color.

Had a Hitachi drive that I picked up on a sale begin to die on me, so I switched it out before things got worse. That is the only hard drive that died on me. I still have backups for the important stuff, just in case.

I no longer buy Hitachi drives. All the Hitachi drives lasted under 2 years.

- I had HP Ultrabook's default hard disk Toshiba 750GB break last summer, lasted about a year, took me six months to replace with a SSD.

- One external Lacie 1TB failed few years back.

- Also broke two or three Seagate drives around 1995-2000 (hazy memories).

I wish I could thumbs up or something, was gonna post the same if nobody else posted it. If memory serves a lot of the failing drives came from a flooded warehouse or something they decided to ship anyway. That being said I've personally not lost a single drive. At work, 2 this week, usually about 5-6 a year. So around 1-2%.

I think sometimes it's just behaviour too. I see failure with people who are prone to digital hoarding. Right now I think my main storage drive idles, because I hear it spin up when I move off the SSD, which I rarely do it seems.