Re: Hard drive life span? Is 4 years ‘doing well’?
 

I would like to thank everyone for their input. Perhaps a genteel life of 4 years is doing well after all and Spinrite does sound interesting.

Re: Hard drive life span? Is 4 years ‘doing well’?
 

I purchased a refurbish HP 4540 dual core i5 w/8GB RAM and 750 GB HDD for $500.
Its sole purpose is to run SPINRITE.

As for minimum requirements... USB plug(s) for a dock, i3 processor 4GB RAM 128 GB HDD.
For 2.5 inch HDDs, I swap the internal Windows HDD for the HDD to be SPINRITEd. It works faster on the internal buss. For 3.5 inch HDDs, I plug in the USB dock.

Re: Hard drive life span? Is 4 years ‘doing well’?
 

Just to add my two cents..............

I've just received back my 9 year old Coolermaster CM Stacker case fitted with a new Intel MoBo, proc, Raid 10, 4 drive array (4 TB) and assorted bells and whistles.

The previous contents had been a dual core Athlon, 2 mirrored WD's for the C drive and 2 ditto Hitachi's for the D drive.

That system was final spec'ed in Feb 2006, built in March 2006 and had the first hard drive (a WD) fail last November 2014. The second (a Hitachi) failed this February 2015. I lost no data during either failure.

Total system run time in that interval was something like 7+ straight years, as I had only recently powered it down at night.

Not bad going for an antique!

Moral of the story: Never, ever leave a drive un - mirrored.


CS

Re: Hard drive life span? Is 4 years ‘doing well’?
 

Thanks Ed and Chris

Re: Hard drive life span? Is 4 years ‘doing well’?
 

I have a 5MB external drive on my MacPlus that I bought around 1988. Still going strong. I have had other drives fail in less than a year. IMO it's a crap shoot.