My point is less of what is possible, and more of what you should be prepared for. Yeah, the above saying to buy a new one is probably excessive, but from a liability standpoint, now they can say they warned you.
My last drive to fail was 5 years old, and I retired a matching drive last year at 9 years old on a suspicion it was exacerbating issues, but it still worked with passing SMART tests. They definitely can go for much longer.
My NAS drives are 2 years and six months old and I bought an identical model drive and installed it as a hot swap last month. I have both a RAID-5 equivalent setup and local and remote backups, but I’ve generally started a rotation or prepared newer drives around the 3 year mark for most of my career.
My point is less of what is possible, and more of what you should be prepared for. Yeah, the above saying to buy a new one is probably excessive, but from a liability standpoint, now they can say they warned you.
My last drive to fail was 5 years old, and I retired a matching drive last year at 9 years old on a suspicion it was exacerbating issues, but it still worked with passing SMART tests. They definitely can go for much longer.
My NAS drives are 2 years and six months old and I bought an identical model drive and installed it as a hot swap last month. I have both a RAID-5 equivalent setup and local and remote backups, but I’ve generally started a rotation or prepared newer drives around the 3 year mark for most of my career.