Personal Computers

[Sara Yamamoto]

Can anyone answer my question: Can a hard drive can live for 12 years? I have a soon to be 12 year old hard drive.

 

[Spinor]

If you barely use it, that's definitely a possibility. However, use, abuse, and extended exposure to magnetic objects might have probably screwed it up throughout that time period, so don't depend on it.

 

[Sara Yamamoto]

I was curious because it hadn't been dropped or anything. We use it a lot and were getting a new one.

 

[Buoysel]

Yes, it can even last longer. But the older it gets the chances of it failing increase. To decrease these chances, don't turn off your computer and make sure the power setting on you computer don't turn off the Hard Drive. You see a common issue when a Hard drive gets old is that it won't spin up. To prevent these issues don't let it stop spinning. It might be a good idea to back up any important files to another drive in case that one fails.

 

[Captain Fabio]

Can anyone answer my question: Can a hard drive can live for 12 years? I have a soon to be 12 year old hard drive.

I think you answered your own question there...
It all depends on the usage of the HDD and how well kept it is.

But getting a new HDD would most likely be a good idea since, I imagen, that soon to be 12 year old HDD isn't very big, GB wise.​

​

 

[Mr. X]

I'd assume that its around 2-4 gbs?

Anyway, i love older computers and parts. Although not as powerful as newer components, they are built to last... forever. Now, computers and computer parts are much cheaper to produce so they forgo longevity since its real cheap to replace it. Some parts are real easy to repair if they break.

I've got a few hdds that are around 18 years old and they worked fine that last time i used them. That said, they work... but are pretty much useless since they hold less then a gb.

 

[Buoysel]

12 years ago? That would be '98-'99 so probably 10-20 GB, maybe 40 but thats pushing it.

 

[Archer]

12 years ago? That would be '98-'99 so probably 10-20 GB, maybe 40 but thats pushing it.

No way. 8GB, tops.

It may well be fine, but keep backups, like everyone should be doing regardless.

98 is the mid-Pentium 3 Era. Most likely has 128MB ram and a 4GB HDD. Higher end would be 256MB ram and 8GB HDD.

 

[Mr. X]

I think 128 would be high end for 98.

 

[Purple Materia]

Yeah, it wouldn't hurt to replace a 12 year old hard drive. The space probably isn't cutting it. But a drive that lasted 12 years is pretty cool- it's reliable.

If you still want to make use of it, you could always install the OS on that drive and use another drive for storage, but that's probably a bad idea considering it's age.

 

[Buoysel]

No way. 8GB, tops.

98 is the mid-Pentium 3 Era. Most likely has 128MB ram and a 4GB HDD. Higher end would be 256MB ram and 8GB HDD.

The computer my family got in '98 or '99. I don't remember a lot about it, but I do remember that it was a Gateway I don't remember the model number but it had Windows 98SE a Celeron @ 550MHz 128 or 256MB RAM (can't remember the exact amount) and a 16GB HDD.

Anyways, Sara, please tell us the size of your old Hard Drive.

 

[Archer]

The computer my family got in '98 or '99. I don't remember a lot about it, but I do remember that it was a Gateway I don't remember the model number but it had Windows 98SE a Celeron @ 550MHz 128 or 256MB RAM (can't remember the exact amount) and a 16GB HDD.

Anyways, Sara, please tell us the size of your old Hard Drive.

Yeah, my bad. Later in the scheme of things, then. Funny that they packaged a Celeron with a big HDD...

 

[Legobricks]

If you know, what model is your drive, Sara? You have me intrigued.

 

[Sara Yamamoto]

Its about 8GB. Going with what Mr.X said, it is possible. Oh, and that is cool! To let a hard drive live for 18 years- Now that's impressive!

 

[Morgnarok]

8gb hard drive is not that big and infact i can use 8gb's in a matter of 30 minutes for one game.My computer has 2 250gb hard drive's.I suggest even if it is good you go get another hard drive because you can find a cheap one at the flea market from a computer repair guy or something.

 

[Sara Yamamoto]

If you know, what model is your drive, Sara? You have me intrigued.

It is a Maxtor hard drive.

 

[Mr. X]

The 18 year old drive has a earlier version of dos on it. Its real fun to mess with when i have nothing better to do.

Specific serial number?

Edit - On old electronics, something i just remembered. I can't remember the name of it but it was a TV that a friend had. It messed up, and he took it in for repair. The repairs would have cost more then what he paid for the TV.

And i was real tempted to repeat something a friend of mine said about real old video cards in responce to Noble. Its nothing offensive, but it would still see me infracted.

 

[Shining Arcanine]

Can anyone answer my question: Can a hard drive can live for 12 years? I have a soon to be 12 year old hard drive.

A hard drive has no set time at which it dies. Although they tend to die with high temperatures and heavy usage. If it runs at 50 degrees centigrade, I would not expect it to last a year.

If you barely use it, that's definitely a possibility. However, use, abuse, and extended exposure to magnetic objects might have probably screwed it up throughout that time period, so don't depend on it.

Usage does not have as much of an effect on drive life as temperature.

Yes, it can even last longer. But the older it gets the chances of it failing increase. To decrease these chances, don't turn off your computer and make sure the power setting on you computer don't turn off the Hard Drive. You see a common issue when a Hard drive gets old is that it won't spin up. To prevent these issues don't let it stop spinning. It might be a good idea to back up any important files to another drive in case that one fails.

With electronics, this normally is not true, as they follow a memoryless probability distributions. Hard drives on the other hand are mechanical and collisions occur between microscopic particles and the platters occur when they are in operation. Eventually this will kill a drive, although integrated SMART systems are capable of detecting this sort of failure before it happens through the use of something called low-level formatting, which is probably more than most people will ever need to know on this topic. When you start getting bad sectors, things tend to go south, especially when the bad sectors are storing metadata or parts of the operating system.

No way. 8GB, tops.

It may well be fine, but keep backups, like everyone should be doing regardless.

98 is the mid-Pentium 3 Era. Most likely has 128MB ram and a 4GB HDD. Higher end would be 256MB ram and 8GB HDD.

No bigger than 10GB. I purchased a computer in December 1998 and it had an 8.4GB hard drive. I believe that was the limit at the time.

By the way, the best you could purchase 12 years ago was the Pentium II. The Pentium III would come out a few months later.

I think 128 would be high end for 98.

My Dell in 1998 came with 64MB of RAM and was expandable to 384MB.

Yeah, it wouldn't hurt to replace a 12 year old hard drive. The space probably isn't cutting it. But a drive that lasted 12 years is pretty cool- it's reliable.

If you still want to make use of it, you could always install the OS on that drive and use another drive for storage, but that's probably a bad idea considering it's age.

A drive that has lasted 12 years could die tomorrow. The on-board controller chip is a memoryless device, which means that it has the same probability of failing now that it had 12 years ago. The mechanical parts on on the other hand do have a memory, so if anything, the drive is less reliable now than it was 12 years ago.

Anyway, I suggest that the original poster consider installing FreeBSD on the system. It could give him many more years of service as a headless server and learning how to use FreeBSD would be highly educational. This assumes that his hardware is not buggy, but he could test that by having FreeBSD recompile itself.

Yeah, my bad. Later in the scheme of things, then. Funny that they packaged a Celeron with a big HDD...

For a time, Celerons were superior to certain types of Pentium II processors. There was an aftermarket upgrade based on Celerons until the Pentium 4 was developed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slocket

 

[Sara Yamamoto]

I don't know the serial number on it. It has pentium 3 processor.