Tech Support Forum - View Single Post

jrpears · 11-25-2008, 04:51 PM

Hey y'all! It's come time again to wipe the hard drives in my computer. It's been three years now; I used to do it every 6 months or so, but now I'm older and lazier and my computer is too. I have a Western Digital 40gb that is half full and a Maxtor 30gb that is 80% empty. Both drives have survived two motherboard/cpu/RAM upgrades, and are IDEs. I mainly use the system for web surfing, chat, burning backups of DVDs and CDs, word processing, etc, no gaming or video editing. I don't need more speed or more storage, the drives haven't been abused, I have 3 case fans and an empty slotted space between the drives where a floppy drive was ages ago. The hard drives are seven years old, and according to any hardware scan I've ever run on this machine there is nothing wrong with them.

My question is: should I just buy a new higher capacity hard drive or should the old ones be alright, given that I don't need more storage or speed? How long does it take for a hard drive to wear out?

11-25-2008, 04:51 PM	#1 (permalink)
jrpears Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 3 OS: winXP sp3	longevity Hey y'all! It's come time again to wipe the hard drives in my computer. It's been three years now; I used to do it every 6 months or so, but now I'm older and lazier and my computer is too. I have a Western Digital 40gb that is half full and a Maxtor 30gb that is 80% empty. Both drives have survived two motherboard/cpu/RAM upgrades, and are IDEs. I mainly use the system for web surfing, chat, burning backups of DVDs and CDs, word processing, etc, no gaming or video editing. I don't need more speed or more storage, the drives haven't been abused, I have 3 case fans and an empty slotted space between the drives where a floppy drive was ages ago. The hard drives are seven years old, and according to any hardware scan I've ever run on this machine there is nothing wrong with them. My question is: should I just buy a new higher capacity hard drive or should the old ones be alright, given that I don't need more storage or speed? How long does it take for a hard drive to wear out?