Will using an external hard drive more often mean that it will fail faster on average?

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf says that there is no correlation between disk usage and failure rate. But I'm not sure if this applies for home usage.

I also wonder - will my external hard drives be just as good if I haven't used them for 10 years? All my external hard drives from 2007 are still going strong, for example.

InquilineKea

• hard-drives

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Answer by wizzard0

1. No, you won't realistically wear out your external HD by normal use, except some rare models with bad firmware (google for "WD green parking")
2. But carrying it in your bag or pocket can limit its lifespan due to shocks.

Anyway, I do not understand how does knowing the answer to this question helps you preserve data - there is no practical difference between 1% fail percentage and 10% fail percentage, you need backups both ways.

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