How long will our hard drives last?

[Senseless]

My 2012 MMI hard drive is nearly 5 years old and I wonder what the expected life is. Has anyone had their hard drive fail? What did it cost to replace and is there a way to back them up before hand?

[yjypm]

My 2012 MMI hard drive is nearly 5 years old and I wonder what the expected life is. Has anyone had their hard drive fail? What did it cost to replace and is there a way to back them up before hand?

Based on my knowledge of electronics, hard drives will theoretically last forever if used properly. If you don't drop it in water, no substantial shock, not leave it in extreme heat, it will last longer than your car.
HDD are not like SSD, they are built to last.

In case you are curious, there's a guy in this forum posted how he swapped his hard drive for an SSD. Theoretically SSDs are much faster than HDDs but for some reasons it wasn't a great improvement over the HDD in his car performance wise.

[MagillaGorilla]

A regular hard drive should last 30,000 hours easily. The only thing we have to worry about would be the amount of times it is spinning up/down and general vibrations. Hopefully it is mounted so the disk is spinning the same way as the wheels, it is well damped and dumps everything to ram then shuts off. It isn't something worth worrying about.

[MagillaGorilla]

Based on my knowledge of electronics, hard drives will theoretically last forever if used properly. If you don't drop it in water, no substantial shock, not leave it in extreme heat, it will last longer than your car.
HDD are not like SSD, they are built to last.

In case you are curious, there's a guy in this forum posted how he swapped his hard drive for an SSD. Theoretically SSDs are much faster than HDDs but for some reasons it wasn't a great improvement over the HDD in his car performance wise.

Like all mechanical things hard drives have a service life. You can run a crystal disc scan on your drives right now and one will probably have sectors that have gone bad and have been reallocated. And that isn't including the drive motor, bearings, the head etc.

[yjypm]

Like all mechanical things hard drives have a service life. You can run a crystal disc scan on your drives right now and one will probably have sectors that have gone bad and have been reallocated. And that isn't including the drive motor, bearings, the head etc.

Thanks for clarifying!

[superswiss]

I'm not sure what the expected life expectancy is, but these are not your regular consumer-grade hard disks. These are automotive-grade hard disks, that can take shocks up to 3.0G while operating and up to 5.0G while non-operating and temperatures that would destroy your regular consumer-grade hard disk in no time. They are especially made for modern Infotainment systems and survive in the harsh environments of a car. It's not that SSDs wouldn't be a better solution, but an automotive-grade SSD with chips that can survive a hot day parked in death valley and a freezing night in Siberia are still very very expensive. I would not replace the hard disk with a consumer-grade SSD unless I lived in a very mild climate and the car interior never gets really hot. Especially not a good idea in a black car.

http://storage.toshiba.com/docs/product-datasheets/mkxx60gsc.pdf

[Senseless]

I'm not sure what the expected life expectancy is, but these are not your regular consumer-grade hard disks. These are automotive-grade hard disks, that can take shocks up to 3.0G while operating and up to 5.0G while non-operating and temperatures that would destroy your regular consumer-grade hard disk in no time. They are especially made for modern Infotainment systems and survive in the harsh environments of a car. It's not that SSDs wouldn't be a better solution, but an automotive-grade SSD with chips that can survive a hot day parked in death valley and a freezing night in Siberia are still very very expensive. I would not replace the hard disk with a consumer-grade SSD unless I lived in a very mild climate and the car interior never gets really hot. Especially not a good idea in a black car.

http://storage.toshiba.com/docs/product-datasheets/mkxx60gsc.pdf

"Automotive grade"; I like that. I'm glad it's designed for extreme temperatures because my car is frozen stiff in January and boiling hot in August.

[mungie]

Automotive specifications are usually 100,000 power-on hours at 125C. Higher temperature=faster wear. Also temperature cycling. If you travel between Dubai and Alaska frequently, your hdd may fail before the 100k hour mark.