Why are all my old drives still working?
I've had quite a few different computers between 2007 and now. With drive docks, external cases and NASes I've created numerous backups and archive drives with HDDs and more recently SSDs. This weekend I catalogued my saved 24 drives, powering up each on as I do every year or so.
They are all working and according to CrystalDiskMark are healthy with no reallocations! Back in the 2000s I remember I had a couple of dead drive that I then destroyed, but since then, as a confirmed DataHoarder, I've kept them all. The brands include WD, Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi, Crucial, Inland and a old Freecom. Power on time for my oldest is 7.3 years.
I'm a firm believer in backups. Any drive can die at any time, but I've had only one drive go corrupt in the last 18 years, and that one was fine after reformatting.
Am I just lucky? Are HDDs really as impermanent as we all think they are?