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External Hard drive - too much read/write makes it fail?

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  • 10-07-2011 5:56pm
    #1
    MargeS
    Registered Users Posts: 1,002 ✭✭✭


    I have no luck with external USB hard drives. I've had many fail over the years. I was told that too much read/write can cause the drives to fail.
    I would use the drives to store large (xGB) iso files, and I would run the files straight from the drive.
    Would this be contributing to my failures or is it just bad luck?


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    #2
    ressem
    Registered Users Posts: 2,426 ✭✭✭ressem


    No, accessing ISOs from the external hard drive shouldn't shorten it's life.

    Hard to tell what might be causing problems for you though.

    There's a few common environmental issues that can shorten the life of a hard drive.

    Temperature. If it's beside a window / radiator that results in temperature fluctuations, too cold (<10 degrees) / too warm (>35 degrees) or switching from warm to cold too quickly.
    Is the external drive carried outside frequently? Consider giving it a few minutes to acclimatise before powering on. (with new server equipment it's recommended to leave it for hours before switching on in it's new environment).

    Unsteady Power, use the "safely remove device" or the computer shutdown before turning off power to the hard drive. The floating drive heads need to park to avoid damage. Drives have a capacitor to reserve a little power for this but not always enough.

    Moving the hard drive sharply while it's operating. Best avoided, though don't take this to extremes.

    Some models of hard drives just had design oversights. Nothing you can really do to avoid this when only buying one disk.


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