Oldest HDD that you still use?

[JimmiG]

Was just running CrystalDiskInfo to check a few things when I realized some of my HDD's are getting pretty old.

My WD 640GB from early 2008 (nearly 8 years ago!) has racked up 27,783 power-on hours - that's over 3 years of continuous spinning, and a power-on count of 4009. My 1TB Hitachi isn't that far off at 21,993 hours. I don't remember exactly when I got it, but the particular model seems to have been released in late 2008.
The rest of the drives are a little bit less ancient - a 2TB WD @ 13,504 hours and 4TB Seagate @ 7,370 hours.

Frankly that's a bit frightening. That 640GB WD is basically the "My Documents" folder, for keeping pictures and documents off the SSD - so some important stuff there. I run scheduled backups twice a week, so a HDD crash would still result in the loss of a few days work. Do you guys tend to replace old HDD's when they get dangerously old or if you just keep using them until they crash?

 

[Deders]

Got a WD Caviar Blue 640 here clocking in at 47,088 hours. I've taken anything important off of it and just use it as a download drive for the last year and a half.


It's always a good thing to have a backup for important things, a 2TB USB3 drive doesn't cost that much these days.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's not currently is use, but I also have a WD Blue 6400AAKS drive. Those were wonderful drives. I had three of them, and sold two off (used, no bad sectors).

 

[MongGrel]

I'd have to look at them all but I imagine is one of my old WD RE3 1TB's that I have 4 of in RAID10.

I think they have been spinning non stop over 5 years now.

The old WD Black in my wifes computer might be older, but at any rate it would be a WD.

I'm a WD fanboi btw

 

[mikeymikec]

If you're getting these readings from their SMART info, my WD Black's statistics (two or three years old) are way off (and other people have complained of the same problem). I installed it and my Sam 840 PRO 256GB within a few hours of each other, obviously the WD Black gets powered down due to idle time (the SSD is the boot drive), yet the figures stand at:

SSD: 5591 hours
HDD: 6045 hours

My wife's PC has a backup IDE 120GB disk in that I'd guess is ten years old.

 

[JimmiG]

Got a WD Caviar Blue 640 here clocking in at 47,088 hours. I've taken anything important off of it and just use it as a download drive for the last year and a half.


It's always a good thing to have a backup for important things, a 2TB USB3 drive doesn't cost that much these days.

Wow, I guess 27k hours isn't that much then.

Yeah I run bi-weekly backups to one USB 3.0 drive and one internal drive (the 4TB Seagate) using Easeus Todo Backup, so a failure wouldn't be disastrous (though it could still mean 3 days of lost changes).

 

[jumpncrash]

wow, I just checked my main system, my ADATA 120GB OS SSD has 21163h on it, and 193 power ons
My storage drive (WD black 1TB) on the same computer has 5124h on it, but just 24 power ons...I really don't shut down my computer very often

I'm sure I have older ones in use somewhere though

 

[bigboxes]

 

[MrTeal]

I have a system with a 20GB HDD running Win98 on a P3. It doesn't get turned on much anymore, but it still fires up every couple months.

 

[bbhaag]

Yeah but that doesn't really count especially since you don't turn it on very often. Hell I have a 540mb drive with DOS 6.22 and WFWG 3.11 still running but I don't use it very often.

My oldest drive still in operation is a 500gb external drive with just over 41k hours on it.

 

[Elixer]

The oldest working I have is a Quantum SCSI HD. However, I only power it up now, maybe once a year or less.
Thing weighs a ton, and AFAIK, doesn't support SMART.

 

[86waterpumper]

Where I work, we are running a untangle box/ firewall on a old athlon 64 system I built back in maybe 2003 or 2004? It has a epox motherboard anybody remember those? I used to love their boards what happened to them? Anyway it is running the drive it was built with, a maxtor diamondmax plus 9 60gb 7200 rpm. This box still runs 24/7 365 days a year :biggrin: That is pretty impressive for the system and the drive also I think. It has had two different power supplies die in that time, but no other parts replaced

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The boot drive in my home server is a 160GB 2.5" HDD that originally came with a 2009 Macbook.

I should probably have a clone and some kind of disaster recovery plan, but the disk honestly isn't used that much. Once it's booted, pretty much everything (VMs and whatnot) is running from the NAS HDDs.

Oh, wait, I do have a clone. I should make sure it's current though.

 

[MrTeal]

Yeah but that doesn't really count especially since you don't turn it on very often. Hell I have a 540mb drive with DOS 6.22 and WFWG 3.11 still running but I don't use it very often.

My oldest drive still in operation is a 500gb external drive with just over 41k hours on it.

Yeah, I'd ditch the system if I didn't still need the ISA slot. I should try to see how many hours are on that old thing, it had a good run of being on 24/7 before I stopped using it much for anything.

 

[DigDog]

i ran two WD for six years, one failed 3 times and recovered every time, the second was still functional, but i finally got the hint it was time to replace them. (both worked nearly 24/7)

 

[Z15CAM]

I have 6 7200 rpm 6Y080P0 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB U133's still in service - You simply can't kill them - None have failed.

Running Win7 Ultimate 32-Bit and WinSE.

Maxtor SATA's where horrible and died of over heating.

 

[SPBHM]

well, my samsung HD103SJ from 2009 is running almost all the time crystaldisk says 43572 hours.
I also have some other drives from around 2005 but they haven't been used all that much recently, and there is also the quantum 10GB from around 99 which still works on my "gaming" win 98 pc

 

[tenpole]

Did you need special software to clock the running time of the hd?

 

[dealcorn]

Did you need special software to clock the running time of the hd?

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_S.M.A.R.T._tools

 

[tenpole]

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_S.M.A.R.T._tools

And which one is rated by our forum posters?

 

[Asphodelus]

I have 6 7200 rpm 6Y080P0 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB U133's still in service - You simply can't kill them - None have failed.

Running Win7 Ultimate 32-Bit and WinSE.

Maxtor SATA's where horrible and died of over heating.

Your computer must sound like a vacuum cleaner if you have 6 of them in the same system - those old Maxtors were LOUD.

 

[Zodiark1593]

I've an old 300 GB WD Passport external HDDs with some 6K hours on it, and more than a few drops on record. The case itself is now in pieces, though I still have the drive and the SATA to USB Adaptor. Still works. I use it nowadays if I want to take anime to watch at a friend's house, but no longer as a backup drive.

My parent's 2003 era desktop has a drive I salvaged from their first PC. It's a 32 GB spinner from 2000 that I threw in just because I felt like it. It is quite noisy (always has), though it still works perfectly well.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

2x WD Green 2TB drives each with ~35k hours
2x Samsung F4 2TB with 15k, 20k hours

No other conventional HDDs in service! I never shut my file server off or spin down the drives, and everything keeps chugging along. I think I used the Samsungs as offline backup for a while, even though I bought all these drives around the same time.

 

[IGemini]

Wow, I guess 27k hours isn't that much then.

Nope, it's not. I have a 3TB Toshiba drive that just passed 23k hours. That's been running since only 2013.

I think my oldest one is a 1TB 7K1000 Hitachi that has somewhere north of 45k hours but it's not currently in use.