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This is *not* hard drive "voodoo" Kirk!
Authored by: jiclark on Nov 03, '06 09:11:28AM

I've recently heard this from a couple of veteran IT people, in reply to my question about an unmountable-but-clicking laptop drive. In my case, I tried the freezer trick and it didn't help, but I've since heard that it will often work, due to the contraction that occurs at lower temps.

Makes sense to me, and I'll be keeping this trick filed away for the future.

As another poster said though, there's no replacement for a good backup, and all hard drives will eventually fail, usually quite suddenly! I four-year old drive is certainly approaching end-of-life…

John-o



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This is *not* hard drive "voodoo" Kirk!
Authored by: Reasonbmor on Nov 03, '06 01:25:05PM

How long do hard drives usually last? I have a Power Book (G4) which I've had for about 2 years now. Is mine nearing an end and should I consider trying to back up all of my data now?



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This is *not* hard drive "voodoo" Kirk!
Authored by: DavidRavenMoon on Nov 03, '06 01:50:19PM

I have hard drives that are well over 10 years old and work fine. I have one that's attached to a Mac Plus! The big problem is heat, and most Firewire drives, for instance, don't have fans. This is why they fail so often. External hard drives used to have fans. Same is true for laptops....

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G4/Digital Audio/1GHz, 1 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.8 • www.david-schwab.com



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This is *not* hard drive "voodoo" Kirk!
Authored by: vonleigh on Nov 03, '06 10:43:09PM

All hard drives fail, it's just a matter of time; it's a mechanical, magnetic spinning disk. Some will last 3 months, some will last 10 years. This is why it's important to always have a backup.



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This is *not* hard drive "voodoo" Kirk!
Authored by: styrafome on Nov 04, '06 02:21:34AM

It isn't easy to say how long hard drives last, but hard drives are rated with Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), in hours. For example, 200,000 hours. The number's an average (Mean), so MTBF is like 5 years then there can be many drives on the long end and equally many at the short end. Like many here, I've had both. Drives that have lasted disappointingly few months, others that have lasted a surprising number of years. From the same manufacturer. You can't expect much else from a device that has to spin so fast for so long, and under stressful conditions of heat, shock, and frequent starting/stopping if in a notebook.

And that's why recent, frequent, redundant backups are always important.



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