Hard Drive Life-Span.. Vista

[Brett_Henderson]

Whenever I change smoke-detector batteries, I change hard drives. They're cheap enough that annual replacement is good insurance against failure.

Now.. with Vista, I've noticed HDD activity well beyond that of XP. I mean like several times as much. That HDD light is ALWAYS doing something.

Question for the experts(*):

[stuart1044]

Im no Nick, but i had Vista for three months on a brand new HDD, and then one day it would not boot at all, and i had to purchase a new one.    Might just been a problem HDD though

[Brett_Henderson]

Thanks for the data  :)

I got this sinking feeling that Vista beats up on HDDs..

[AMDDDA]

I have a hard drive from 2003, and it still works fine.


Don't know what you mean about it beating up...


XP by the way, professional ;p.


it's a western digital 7200 RPM 145 GB, never crapped out once ;P.

[Brett_Henderson]

Don't know what you mean about it beating up...

Way more activity...

[AMDDDA]

I'm wondering why mine would be perfectly fine now though, as it is at least 4 times as old as your alls, even when I bet I have used it about as heavily during the same time span

[Brett_Henderson]

I'm wondering why mine would be perfectly fine now though, as it is at least 4 times as old as your alls, even when I bet I have used it about as heavily during the same time span

I hope you didn't just jinx yourself.. LOL

[AMDDDA]

Well, I understand that, but good HDD's are expensive, and I don't want to buy a new Raptor every year, even though it's yearly, that's 250$ I could have saved for an SLI mobo, or even better, a skulltrail (just kidding xD, Skulltrail is kind of wacked).

[Slotback]

My bro has had the same hard drive for almost 6 years, I've had a drive in my computer for 3 years, dad has a drive in his computer for 3 years also. I really wouldn't worry about drives failing every year! All our computers are on almost 24/7. Buy a nice drive THEN replace everything THREE years or more.  Never buy Maxtor either, heard thousands of storys of them failing... Seagate / Western Digital ONLY.

[Brett_Henderson]

Not being able to recover just a series of Gmax files would be worse than buying a $250 HDD, to me.. let alone the other stuff.. plus the time for a complete format and re-install (that alone is worth $250 when you're on a schedule)..

All that aside..  the original question...

Has anyone heard that Vista might shorten a HDD life ?

[Mushroom_Farmer]

My dad recently bought a HP Media Center w/Vista. I noticed the HDD activity light is always blinking a lot on it also. I just assumed it was because of all the proccesses running in the background. He won't mess with any of the settings and I haven't had time to shut things off.

Personally, I have never had a HDD failure, except for a WD93028 from an old Commodore PC-20 III, but I'm not running Vista.

[richardd43]

I am not sure but I think it is all the indexing that Vista does that keeps the lite blinking. The longer Vista is on the drive seems to reduce the time the light is active.

Vista 64 has been on this drive for a year and (other than at startup) the HDD activity lite is seldom on now when the computer is idle.

[expat]

I have Vista on my laptop and the HD light is only on when I ask something of the computer, the rest of the time it is off and when it is one, it does not seem to be any greater than XP. As for how long a hard drive lasts, well I have one in my desktop that is from 1997 and still going strong.

Matt

[Mazza]

Hehe i think my HDD light is broken....JUST KIDDING!

Xp only uses the HDD when it needs to

[NickN]

Replacing a HDD once a year is a bit overkill.. I have drives from the 90's that still work fine. they are not lightbulbs but do like any other device have an electronic lifetime or duty cycle rating

I replace them for performance when better come out, not security. For security I use an external array of backup units and also have a secondary hard copy I keep in case of a baclup drive failure. I have only seen (personal) 2 hard drives fail in my entire life and both would have been defects, not burnouts

Richard is right.. Indexing in VISTA is 10x worse than XP... shut it DOWN



and VISTA wont shorten HDD life

Defective SATA drivers can though.. seen that happen before
GRIND GRIND GRIND - CLINK