Backblaze Study on HD Lifetimes

A fascinating study done by Backblaze on the lifetimes of hard drives. After four years of running 25,000 drives, they analyzed all of their data. Based on that, they found that 95% last just 1 year, 94% last 2 years, 90% last 3 years, 80% last 4 years, and just 50% last 5 years.

My conclusion from this is make sure you check the drive at least once a day with SMART Utility, but even more importantly- always have backups.

Check out some more discussion, or check out the original study.