How long does the average hard drive last? I'm about to replace the hard drive for the second time in 4 years. I bought the Mac in summer of 2007, replaced the original hard drive in spring of 2010 and now that hard drive has stopped working.
iMac
That's what a mathematical average is. Some at one end of the curve may last ten years, others at the unfortunate other end of the curve may last two.
But if this seems to be happening often, it's either just bad luck and a rotten throw of the dice, or something systemic. I'd keep an eye on temps. The ideal max temp for a drive is around 45C. Running considerably hotter than that, say, often in the low to mid to upper fifties, long term, may cause premature failure. Macs tend to not ramp up the fans adequately to suit conditions, that's why some users install smcFan Control. You will probably hear from some purists who will tell you not to run anything like it, but used conservatively and appropriately, it will not harm your computer. Quite the opposite: it will help the hardware last longer.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/12/hard-drive-temperatures-be-afraid.html
I want to say 3-5 years. Some brands only warranty their drives for a year, while others are 3 to 5 years. When I replace a drive, I buy new, not refurbished, I review comments on newegg.com, and length of warranty is a factor. So, for example, I just bought a backup/storage drive for my iMac .... Western Digital black series, 5 year warranty. Of course even with a good warranty, sometimes drives just fail. 😟
Being an electro-mechanical device that gets very hot in use, a harddrives is one of the more tempermental components in a computer. I've had computers for up to four years each over a great period of years and have never had a harddrive fail. I have also read on these forums of harddrives lasting only a year in an iMac, which because of its small enclosure is more suseptible to overheating. I believe I have read on harddrive manufactuers' web sites in the technical section that the AVERAGE rated "MTBF" (Mean Time Before Failure) for their devices runs around 300,000 hours. That means that over the lifespan of all the harddrives they produce, the "typical" harddrive can run for 300,000 hours before failing. BUT, this is an Average. Some harddrives may run 1,000,000 hours and others may only last 1000 hours. Your mileage may very.
Hope this helps:)
Thanks everyone! When I take it in for service I'll get them to run heat tests to see if that's a factor. However, I'm beginning to think I'm just that unlucky! At least last time they were able to recover data for me since I suck at backing up files.
My oldest (hours of use) drive has 22,428 Power_On_Hours and is about 4.5 years old.
I use smc fan control on my Mac Pro.
I check my drives with Disk Warrior and disk utility, about every 500 - 1000 hours of use.
How long does the average hard drive last?
