Hard drive life and warranties....

[#1]

I don't know how they manage it,  but it appears hard drive manufacturers have figured out how longer their hard drives will last...
In Sept 2006 I bought two segate drives (with a 3 year warranty),  this week,  one has failed completely, and the other is having an increasing problem with bad sectors.
I have been reminded of a few important lessons, primary one being,  remember to do backups regularly.
Using RAID (1 or 5) can can help in preventing loss of data if you haven't backed up  (it saved my posterior this time).
When using RAID, don't use two disks of the same type otherwise there's a good chance they may fail at the same time.

[#2]

You're probably right but I'm sure that identical disks always used to be recomended for RAID.
There's no real substitute for proper backups (except for data loss of course).

[#3]

I remember some drives used to have lifetime warranties and they actually seemed to last that - a lifetime!
I did know one person send one back once - he bought it 2nd hand. I can only assume he 'lost' the receipt or something. Modern drives are definitely not as reliable I'm afraid. I've had several fail or become unreliable as windows drives. They're now used (if at all) as back up drives.

[#4]

Backing up on a drive you suspect is unreliable?????? 
Sorry, couldn't help that.
Modern drives are generally faster and higher data density, I guess reliability is a pay-off.
So many things 'just aint built like they used to be' these days, I guess we shouldn't complain too much about hard drives though as we can now purchase huge capacities for so little so a backup drive in now more affordable.
If an external drive is used only for backup (not left plugged in and powered except when needed), do you think it'll last longer as it is clocking up very few hours of running time? (Offset by  the increased chance of dropping it of course.)

[#5]

Quote

If an external drive is used only for backup (not left plugged in and powered except when needed), do you think it'll last longer as it is clocking up very few hours of running time? (Offset by  the increased chance of dropping it of course.)

In theory, it should last longer..
One of the utilities I've got tells me that my current drive (the one that's not dead yet) has been powered on for 26098 hours ( 2 years, 354 days, 10 hours),  with 241 power cycles.
Where my external drive (bought at the same time for backup purposes) has been powered on for 138 hours, with 74 power cycles.
At that rate, I'd hope the external drive would keep working for some time yet.

[#6]

Quote from: walker23

Backing up on a drive you suspect is unreliable??????

Well I'd happily back up onto another more reliable drive if I had the money.
I only use the dodgy drive as a backup purely because I know I won't use it much and so the demand on the drives hardware is far less than my main drives.

[#7]

Quote from: kmilburn

I don't know how they manage it,   but it appears hard drive manufacturers have figured out how longer their hard drives will last...

Of course they know. They design the "average" life into the drives. Better engineered design/components =Longer life but also = Higher cost
10,000rpm SCSI sever drives come with longer warranties, but at a much higher cost.
I bought two Seagate 74G SCSI drives second hand off E-bay last year for £20/each. One failed within days, the other is still going strong with no sign of creeping failure. Both had six months of the original five year warranty left. I simply RMA'd the failing drive back to Seagate and they sent me a refurbished 147G. 
I keep 3 or four very current backups of everything.