Hard Drive Life Expectancy and How It Impacts You


One of the things that most small business owners do not think about when it comes to the PCs in their office is the hard drive inside each of their computers. The common thought is akin to that of the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so as long as the computers work and employees are able to perform their duties then there is no reason to spend time thinking about the health of the computers in the office. Unfortunately there is no visible wear indicator on a hard drive unless you get a warning from your operating system that a failure has occurred. If there is any indication that the drive is starting to go bad, it might be hard to notice if it is just adding to other compounding issues.

Hard drives are one of very few items in the computer is a wear item. Solid state drives are more resilient than traditional spinning disk drives. Gaining in popularity, but due to their cost vs. storage space metric, solid state drives are not taking the lead in media storage in prebuilt desktops and laptops. Even with solid state drives not having any mechanical components; they still do have a life span. Small businesses may not have the budget for extensive backup and disaster recovery solutions so smartly maintaining the hardware that you do have is very important to ensure that your business remains operational.

There are several factors that play into the life span of the hard drive. First the style of the hard drive is important.  Thanks to their portability, laptop drives typically experience more shock damage over its lifespan compared to one in a desktop computer. Laptop drives also tend to have glass platters opposed to the metal platters in desktop drives making them just that much more delicate. How hot and the amount of airflow will also play a factor in drive longevity. Cramming the machine into a back corner up against a wall or closed off in a closet will not be doing it any favors. Another determining factor in the lifespan of the drive is the usage of the drive, if it is a laptop are you constantly traveling with it, do you leave your computer on 24 hours a day. Even if you are not using the machine hard drive wear still occurs from applications running in the background. With all of that said don’t fear using your machine after all it is just a tool that you use to get a job done. The point here is that if you are concerned about uptime or your data the lifespan of the hard drive inside of the machine is something you should keep in the back of your mind as time goes on.

Differing factors mentioned above play important roles in the lifespan of the drive but generally speaking we have seen 2-3 years from 2.5” (laptop) drives and 3-5 years from 3.5” (desktop) drives. Machines are lasting much longer and you may not be ready to replace the entire computer just yet. The cost to replace the hard drive is much less than replacing the entire machine. We recommend you start thinking of replacing the drive every three years the machine is in service to ensure that minimal downtime. While the hard drive is still operating normally it is possible to clone the drive to a new one without losing any data or settings greatly reducing the migration time and potential stress from unannounced downtime. Or at the very least you should have a backup solution already in place for when the inevitable happens and the hard drive fails, which is something that you should be doing anyways.

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