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And how many drives do you have, and how long have you had them? In the last 15 years I've probably had 20 HDD's fail out of 150 total. There was a particular

by jcnnghm 15y ago

And how many drives do you have, and how long have you had them? In the last 15 years I've probably had 20 HDD's fail out of 150 total. There was a particularly bad period where I was dealing with about 15 Dell laptops with 1.8" HDD's. Many of those drives failed, some repeatedly. Bad enough that I was buying 5 drives at a time until we could replace the computers. HDD's from every manufacturer can and do fail at fairly high rates.

jules 15y ago
If I'm counting correctly I've had 11 drives, and each was used on average 3-5 years I think. I've helped a lot of other people with their computers being the nerd kid, and the problem has not been a failed drive yet (and it has been other failed hardware, like RAM and video cards and sound cards). If you've had about 20 drives fail, and of 15 Dell laptops a lot of drives failed, some repeatedly, don't you think that your bad experience was primarily caused by that type of drive?
- rm445 15y ago
  Hard drive failure is probabalistic. You're just one data point. There are plenty of people who have seen a moderate number of drive failures, and some people who have so many drives fail that you have to check that they aren't tapping them with a magnet for good luck or something. Not believing in hard drive failure because you haven't had any, despite the rest of the word telling you it's a fact of life... well, it says something interesting about human psychology, is all.
  - jules 15y ago
    Sure I believe in hard drive failures. I'm not saying that hard drives don't fail, I'm just providing my experience with hard drive failure. Where did you get the idea that I don't believe in hard drive failure? I realize that I'm just one data point. What I don't get is why people downvote me for providing this data point, whereas people don't seem to have a problem with blanket statements like "HDDs do fail, too. A lot." that provide zero data points. Moreover we are talking about SSDs vs HDDs here. "HDDs do fail, too. A lot." may be true, but if according to Jeff Atwood, a SSD proponent, on the order of half of SSDs fail in the first year then HDDs may fail a lot, but SSDs fail a whole lot more.

by jcnnghm 15y ago

jules 15y ago

If I'm counting correctly I've had 11 drives, and each was used on average 3-5 years I think. I've helped a lot of other people with their computers being the nerd kid, and the problem has not been a failed drive yet (and it has been other failed hardware, like RAM and video cards and sound cards). If you've had about 20 drives fail, and of 15 Dell laptops a lot of drives failed, some repeatedly, don't you think that your bad experience was primarily caused by that type of drive?

rm445 15y ago
Hard drive failure is probabalistic. You're just one data point. There are plenty of people who have seen a moderate number of drive failures, and some people who have so many drives fail that you have to check that they aren't tapping them with a magnet for good luck or something. Not believing in hard drive failure because you haven't had any, despite the rest of the word telling you it's a fact of life... well, it says something interesting about human psychology, is all.
- jules 15y ago
  Sure I believe in hard drive failures. I'm not saying that hard drives don't fail, I'm just providing my experience with hard drive failure. Where did you get the idea that I don't believe in hard drive failure? I realize that I'm just one data point. What I don't get is why people downvote me for providing this data point, whereas people don't seem to have a problem with blanket statements like "HDDs do fail, too. A lot." that provide zero data points. Moreover we are talking about SSDs vs HDDs here. "HDDs do fail, too. A lot." may be true, but if according to Jeff Atwood, a SSD proponent, on the order of half of SSDs fail in the first year then HDDs may fail a lot, but SSDs fail a whole lot more.