Ask Drive Savers

What is the lifespan of a hard drive?

Hard drive manufacturers make their best guesses about drive longevity based on tests completed in a controlled environment. They assign an MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) rating that becomes part of the drive’s specification. Ratings have risen dramatically over the years with drives expected to last 114 to 170 years!

Recently, engineers at Google conducted their own real-world tests. (A PDF copy of the study is downloadable at:http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf). The Google study identified several factors that contributed to the early death of a hard drive but the report drew no concrete conclusions.

As a data recovery service provider, DriveSavers has suggested that with daily use, replacing a hard drive about every 3-5 years. It is also worth noting that many consumers already replace their computers with larger, faster hard drives and processors to accommodate new versions of the operating systems.