How's your old spinner holding up?

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

ST-157A
44MB

Still working.
Theretroweb shows an image with a datestamp from 1991. So i think this model is from end 80's begin 90s'

 

[nageme]

ST-157A
44MB
Still working.

And it's Seagate. Like I said earlier, one can't generalize. There are good models.

It shows up in device view as WL4000GSA6454, which lines up closer to unlisted 4TB mediamax units but this one is a 4.9TB unit and yes I have filled it enough to confirm it's well over the 4TB mark.
All the others like it will show up as ~4471.2GB usable and this is 4564GB usable.

Others you have?
Whether 4.8TB or 4.9TB, both are odd. The only thing I can think of is a 5TB (or 6TB) HDD with bad sectors made hidden somehow.

 

[Hyderz]

Could it have been physical trauma?

I also got the impression, including based on the Backblaze statistics, that Seagate has more dodgy models than other manufacturers.
But it's not a scientific study. Some Seagate models may be/are good, and other manufacturers also have less reliable models on occasion.

The thing is i looked after the drive well, always eject the damn thing before unplugging from the computer.... you could i ended up with a bad batch...
but looking all your holidays pics is not something i want to go through again... and since you showed me the failure rates of seagate drives just proves their build quality is not up to standard compared to WD or toshiba spinners... i havent purchased any seagate ssds... but not gonna start

 

[lexluthermiester]

ST-157A
44MB

Still working.
Theretroweb shows an image with a datestamp from 1991. So i think this model is from end 80's begin 90s'

View attachment 384177

Yup, that's a late 80's drive. Still cool though!

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

And i have this drive from 1988

Magnetic Perhiperals, type 94205-51
MFM Drive

 

[SPDIF]

The oldest drive i have is a Samsung HDD from the year 1998. IDE drive with a total of 3.2Gb space!

Followed by my famous WD Raptor from 2003 with 74 Gb total capacity and 10.000rpm. They both still work okay! If you handle them with some love they will serve you long time!
The Raptor appeared dead after years, but i removed the circuit board, cleaned all oxidized contacts, and it did live again! Happy no dead sectors or anything.
I use them in old rigs with Windows 98 and so on, but i always handle them now with extreme care.

Or this old boy;

 

[windwhirl]

I got a few spinners in here, they're doing OK so far, but two of them are fairly new so they still got at least 5 to 10 years left in them before I even start considering a replacement.
A Toshiba DT01ACA200 2TB drive, bought in... I think 2015/2016
A Seagate Ironwolf 10 TB drive, bought in 2020
And a Ironwolf 8TB drive, bought in 2024.

 

[xBruce88x]

Most of my HDDs are still working. My oldest is my 1TB Velociraptor that I picked up like 10 years ago. Still going strong. Was my main drive until SSDs became more affordable.

I've always wanted to get a couple (or 4) in Raid-0 lol

ST-157A
44MB

Still working.
Theretroweb shows an image with a datestamp from 1991. So i think this model is from end 80's begin 90s'

View attachment 384177

Ah yes, the hard drive she says not to worry about!

 

[freeagent]

I've always wanted to get a couple (or 4) in Raid-0 lol

I had 4x Raptor 150s in Matrix Raid 0 and one by one the started to die. I dont think Raptors like working together.

Either that, or they do not appreciate unstable overclocks that much while paired up..

I kept the one with the window because I always loved her. Now she just clicks

 

[xBruce88x]

I had 4x Raptor 150s in Matrix Raid 0 and one by one the started to die. I dont think Raptors like working together.

Either that, or they do not appreciate unstable overclocks that much while paired up..

I kept the one with the window because I always loved her. Now she just clicks

Guess I need a Chris Pratt controller to keep them in line!

 

[freeagent]

Guess I need a Chris Pratt controller to keep them in line!

Yeah those pretend Intel ones are terrible

 

[John Naylor]

I had and NAS with (4) 2 TB SSHDs before I built my current desktop back in 2013... I mostly use lappies now. That build is still on these forums somewhere. It has 2 of the SSHDs in it, and the 2 others are in other desktops... I did replace two of them back around 2019-2020 I had bought them as spares and just replaced them when they croaked. It's got everything OC'd, water cooled with a dual pump and a temp indicator on from panel. Hasn't been turned off for more than a reboot since Nov 2013.

Still have a couple of SAT notebook drives tat I pop in a docking station now and then. Also have a 1 GB SCSI drive that I paid $1000 for back in the gay,,, anbd a few IDE drives that I saved for a reason I can no longer rememeber.

 

[INSTG8R]

I have just have one spinner left a 1TB WD Blue from 2016 I use for all my downloads and drivers etc.

I have a pair of ancient WD Blacks I retired because I just don't have any real need or use for them but they are still perfectly useable if I needed them

 

[stahlhart]

Retired the last ones in use here a couple of months ago, a pair of 6Tb WD Blacks. They were still running great, just generating unnecessary heat in the case, and a little too slow to keep up with game library updates mainly. But all of the WD Blacks I've used have been great otherwise.

The last drives I had fail in use were a couple of those IBM Deathstars, the 75GXPs, back in 2001 or so.

 

[BADCAP]

Some of the drives in this thread have impressive power on hours...

I think the oldest drive I have in daily use is a 1TB WD black from the early 2010s that got mothballed for years before being repurposed as a drive for a security cam DVR:

Still, 32k+ hours with 28k of those with near constant writes is nothing to sneeze at. Interesting how some models just seem to go forever, while others live and die by the bathtub curve.
My personal suspicion is that a lot of it has to do with their operating environment- stable temperature, infrequent vibrations or shocks, clean power, and few power cycles being conducive to long life. That and maybe just some models have design flaws.

I don't have any old HDDs other than that one WD black in the DVR. Maybe a pair of WD reds from 2015/16 time frame that I infrequently use for secondary backups, though that's hardly old. Most of my really old ones were pillaged for their magnets and recycled years ago.

The bulk of my HDD storage drives are all from the last five years; the ones in my RAIDZ 2 pool stopped accumulating hours when it became far too costly to run my NAS 24/7 (or even frequently). Now I only power it on when needed, or once a month to perform a scrub, run smart tests, update the os, and perform backups to/from it. Sadface.

I think the last time I personally experienced a bona-fide HDD failure was probably in the late 2000s- one of those late model Maxtors that were half-height, probably about 40GB, and manufactured right before or around the time they sold to Seagate. EDIT: I'm pretty sure I've lost more data from RAID array failures and botched ransomware than actual drive deaths lol.

 

[xBruce88x]

I have just have one spinner left a 1TB WD Blue from 2016 I use for all my downloads and drivers etc.
View attachment 386358
I have a pair of ancient WD Blacks I retired because I just don't have any real need or use for them but they are still perfectly useable if I needed them

Ah so, the blue ball drive? Haha couldn't resist

 

[sam_86314]

Here's one of the spinners in my server...

Yep, nearly 84000 hours on this circa-2013 WD Red, and it's still going strong.

All eight drives in my server are retired datacenter drives, and thus are all about twelve years old. For comparison, my server's boot SSD (that I bought new) has over 21000 hours on it, so these drives all had over 30-40k hours on them when I got them.

I haven't had any drive failures, although I am using my single cold spare after some IO errors that ZFS caught a couple of years ago. I really should probably look into getting newer drives or, at the absolute least, get a few new cold spares.

EDIT: Naturally, as I write this, one of the drives (not the one in the screenshot) started throwing errors, and ZFS caught it and fixed it after a reboot. Anyway, two new drives are now on the way, and I'll be improving my data integrity practices moving forward.

 

[Onasi]

Just got a mail from a colleague of mine. Seems that an HDD in one of the old (and I mean OLD) workstations that we still use for really ancient tools that are sometimes needed has decided to give up the ghost. Can’t fully confirm now since I am on vacation, but judging by his description it might be an ancient Quantum Fireball EX that’s been with us for… shit, 27 years now? Something like that? When I’ll get back I’ll check, maybe attach a photo of the old trooper. Should be noted that it obviously wasn’t under the same load as being in a file server or something, but still, that’s some lifespan.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Just got a mail from a colleague of mine. Seems that an HDD in one of the old (and I mean OLD) workstations that we still use for really ancient tools that are sometimes needed has decided to give up the ghost. Can’t fully confirm now since I am on vacation, but judging by his description it might be an ancient Quantum Fireball EX that’s been with us for… shit, 27 years now? Something like that? When I’ll get back I’ll check, maybe attach a photo of the old trooper. Should be noted that it obviously wasn’t under the same load as being in a file server or something, but still, that’s some lifespan.

That series was after Maxtor had bought Quantum. Still, a Maxtor drive from 1998 lasting until now? Yeah, I'd say it gave it's all. 3 decades is not bad.

 

[Hardcore Games]

I have retired disks < 4TB as the old disks are too slow and too many bad sectors

Some disks I gave still have over 30,000 hours on them and they still work

 

[Dullahan]

2017 bought seagate drive, became noisy so i took off all important data of it.

 

[zenlessyank]

My desktop drivers appear to be super durable (touch wood). My external drives on the other hand... Only one of them still works out of the 3-4 that I bought in the last 8 or so years.

I've had several WD external Book drives die and so I took them out of their enclosures and plugged them straight into SATA ports and tried using WD tools to repair/diagnose them and they wouldn't even detect them. I then discovered this tool...

HDDGURU: HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool

This freeware HDD Low Level Format utility can erase, Low-Level Format and re-certify a SATA, IDE, SAS, SCSI, SSD hard disk drive. Will also work with any USB and FIREWIRE external drive enclosures as well as SD, MMC, MemoryStick and CompactFlash media.

hddguru.com

And have saved a 5TB and 4TB drives with no issues. It really is a cool tool when you think it is dead even as per manu own tools and Boom! Empty, formatted and ready to go.

 

[AusWolf]

I've had several WD external Book drives die and so I took them out of their enclosures and plugged them straight into SATA ports and tried using WD tools to repair/diagnose them and they wouldn't even detect them. I then discovered this tool...

HDDGURU: HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool

This freeware HDD Low Level Format utility can erase, Low-Level Format and re-certify a SATA, IDE, SAS, SCSI, SSD hard disk drive. Will also work with any USB and FIREWIRE external drive enclosures as well as SD, MMC, MemoryStick and CompactFlash media.

hddguru.com

And have saved a 5TB and 4TB drives with no issues. It really is a cool tool when you think it is dead even as per manu own tools and Boom! Empty, formatted and ready to go.

I'll have a look, thanks.