External Hard Drives Don’t Last Forever

It’s not a matter of IF your external hard drive will die, it’s a matter of WHEN.

Let’s say that again for the people in the back.

It’s not a matter of IF your external hard drive will die, it’s a matter of WHEN.

Your external hard drive won’t last forever.

You don’t expect your computer’s hard drive to last forever, do you? Well, external hard drives (EHDs for short) are often the exact same technology, just put in a little box outside of your computer instead of inside the computer.

Therefore it stands to reason that EHDs will fail sooner than later. The average life expectancy for a spinning external hard drive is about 3-5 years, but that is just the average! Some may fail after a year of regular use, when you don’t eject it properly, or when it gets knocked on the floor.

Solid state drives (SSDs) can last a little longer (5-10 years) because they don’t have moving parts. The same is true of flash (USB) drives.

This is why it is so important to have backups of your files!

Case in Point

Recently a client brought me a box full of external hard drives and CDs. My team gathered all the digital files from the different media sources but there was one troublesome EHD. My computer knew it was there but I couldn’t get it to mount properly. I tried it on different computers with different operating systems. Nothing. The client told me he had used the external hard drive within the last few months.

So I took the hard drive to my local computer service store and for $85 they did a diagnostic on the EHD. The diagnosis: It was dead!

The next step might be to send the EHD to a data recovery company that may or may not be able to retrieve the data from the EHD, for between $750 and $3,000.

Since my client believed this EHD was just a backup of other data we already had, we held off on sending the drive to the data recovery center. But it could have easily been a necessary evil in the process.

Prepare for the Worst

The moral of this story is to take care of your external hard drives like you would take care of your computer. You want to be prepared for the worst to happen – the loss of your data.

Here are a few things you can do to safeguard your drives and data.

Make a note of when you start using an external hard drive. I put a label on all my drives including drives for clients. You can even put an “expiration” date on it.
Make a backup of your data. I use Backblaze, a cloud-based backup program because it will automatically back up EHDs when they are plugged into the computer. If something happens to a drive (and it has), you can order your missing data through a web-based download or on an external hard drive. It has truly been a lifesaver.
Check your data often. This goes for all your backups and syncs.
Be sure to correctly eject your hard drive from your computer. Please don’t just put the cord out of the computer without ejecting the drive. This can corrupt your drive.
If you have old drives with photos and videos on them, now is the time to get those files onto a new drive that is backed up. We can help with that.

Whether your external hard drive holds your family photos, work documents, or a backup of your computer files, it’s important to take care of it and be prepared for it to fail eventually. With a little forethought, you can protect your precious data from loss and corruption.

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4 Comments

Janet Barclay on April 22, 2024 at 8:20 am

I’ve had one external hard drive bite the dust, and although the one I’m using currently is working, it is several years old and I don’t trust it 100%. I decided to buy a couple of thumb drives, and I back up files to one and photos to the other. Easier to grab in an emergency too!

Seana Turner on April 22, 2024 at 9:30 am

My husband walked through as I was reading this and I told him the story about the dead hard drive. That’s a harsh reality. We have SSDs, and TimeMachine, but I do think putting a piece of tape with at least the date of when you start using the EHD (or an expiration date, as you suggest) is worth the quick effort. It’s easy to lose track of how old these things are, right?

Linda Samuels on April 22, 2024 at 11:40 am

I appreciate the reminder. I’ve had internal and external hard drives go. I have an external drive we created when we cleared out my parents’ house. A company digitized my parents’ photos, slides, films, and videos. We made a second copy, which my brother has. We also uploaded all of the material to a website so the family could access the material.

You reminded me that I should check the external drive to see if I need to replace it before it goes bad.

I wish you luck with your move. Where are you going?

Hazel Thornton on April 23, 2024 at 4:54 pm

I know this, and I bought a new EHD, but it won’t do me any good if I don’t transfer the contents of the old EHD to it, now will it? Adding to my TO-DO list.