Do Larger HDD's Have Higher Failure Rates?

[Spartan Erik]

I currently have two external hard drives, both Seagates (160 GB, 320 GB). I've owned the 160 for two years and the 320 for one year.

I'm considering buying this 1 TB drive from Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136321 so I can consolidate my data onto one drive and sell the two I currently have.

However, my friend told me that larger hard drives have higher failure rates.. I have heard this from others too but is there any truth or validity to it? I haven't found any articles talking about how larger drives have higher failure rates.

Also, do you all think an external TB drive for $109.99 with free shipping is a good deal?

Thanks!

 

[xPlozion]

first, about the price, i do think it's a good deal. i picked up my 500gb seagate internal sata drive for around $70 from newegg, but i already am running low on space w/ the games i've got on windows.

as for the failure rate, i could wrong, as this is just a theory, but since they are trying to cram more space onto the same sized disc, whether it's by increasing the number of discs in the drive itself or making the packets (correct terminology???) closer such as blu-ray does vs cd-rom, that there's more room for error. from what i've heard, blu-rays are more prone to being damaged by scratches than cd-roms are, but again, i could be wrong, and the same concept could apply to hdds.

although, from what i've read, wd 1tb hdds aren't bad, while others are saying that seagate's are better
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/915540.html
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=586779

onto my partition setup (low space left):
my partition setup is as follows: 150gb ext3 for media, a 75gb ext3 for linux home, another 50gb iirc for my / root, then the rest for windows (in 2 seperate partitions (c & d))

 

[nterror]

Price looks good. I own a WD and a Seagate HDD (both 320GB external). Both have been running fine, very little sound, for over a year. I can't say which one is better...

Larger HDD have more platters (Hitachi Deskstar has 5), and mathematically are more prone to failure, not proven though. Then theres paranoia from putting all your eggs in one basket, losing 1TB of data hurts more than losing 320GB.

Also, being external, the risk increases (accidentally dropped, etc.).

All you can really do is have a good backup plan.

 

[Sohail]

I don't think they do, Mine has 1TB and it's never failed anything...

 

[Smith6612]

If you're like me and all your hard drives are full of is games and obviously the operating system, I wouldn't worry so much about failure rates. If you want to be safe, get two of the same drives and put them in RAID 1. I have 3 1TB drives here and they work perfectly fine.

 

[parkerpt]

I've had two Bason Computer 300GB external USB HDDs.

Both had soft failures early on, but I believe the problem was related to the fact that I would connect them via a USB hub. I was able to fix the problems with the DiskProbe sector editor tool. Sector 0 needs 0x55 0xAA in the last two bytes and I was able to patch it.

Since then, my daughter kicked one of the drives while it was running, causing a fatal head crash.

The other drive, even while connected directly (no hub) to my laptop, experienced more soft errors. I was able to patch it a few more times with DiskProbe, but now it is no longer recognized by my system when I connect it.

I have no way of knowing if the second drive's ultimate failure is related to having connected it via the USB hub a couple years ago.

I now have a Western Digital 640GB drive; no problems yet.

 

[vol7ron]

it used to be that a larger drive had the tendency to fail more, compared to the smaller drives. but this was comparing 500mb vs 4GB. today's standards i think the life expectancy is posted on the box and there shouldn't be too much difference between 150GB and 1TB.

When SSDs get to 1TB, which is to happen in the next few years, then the failure rate will infinitely drop for them.