It’s important to keep hard drives away from warm or hot conditions that might contribute more heat to the drive, thus putting more unnecessary stress on it (unless it’s meant to withstand high temperatures). Hard drives are going to get warm while they’re powered on and active.

When handling a hard drive, handle it carefully, like a baby, or an egg (like the one you’re supposed to keep alive for high school science class, not the one you crack for breakfast). Hard drives are built in a way that any physical damage can really mess things up… and your data can be lost in an instant. Here are some of the easiest precautions you can take with your hard drive to give it the best chance against premature failure: As with most things, if you take care of your hard drive, it will better last to its potential. Though the average might be three to five years, hard drives can theoretically last much longer (or shorter, for that matter). Simple, effective habits for better hard drive health Failures occur for various reasons, ranging from temperature to magnetic field conditions to a manufactured defect. This makes it harder to predict exactly how long a hard drive will last. It’s fair to note, however, that the way HDDs are mechanically built give them somewhat of a random failure potential.

The AFR will describe a drive failure possibility percentage after a full year of use. The MTBF describes an estimated amount of hours of runtime before mechanical failure in a drive. MTBF and AFR are linked, but they represent slightly different types of data. Hard drive manufacturers typically provide a “mean time between failure” (MTBF) and/or “annualized failure rate” (AFR) for their drives. What matters is how you prevent losing the data stored on the drive itself. You can just get a new replacement enclosure, so that isn’t a huge issue. Truth is, it varies.Įven if the enclosure fails, the drive is still recoverable. Asking about the longevity of an external enclosure-a metal or plastic housing designed to cover and protect a disk drive from damage-is a different question altogether. This means any HDD, whether it’s external or inside of a system. The simplest answer is that they can run smoothly for three to five years. So let’s get to it: What’s your hard drive’s expiration date?įirst, let’s start with hard disk drives (HDDs). The answers aren’t exactly clear-cut, but there’s a consensus for how long you might expect a typical hard drive to work, whether it’s external or internal. As a Customer Support Technician for hard drive tool technologies, I’m often approached by customers asking: “How long will my external hard drive last?” And then the follow-up, “When will a hard drive failure happen?” or “When can a hard drive be expected to fail?”

Removable hard drive