How Long Do External Hard Drives Last 3 to 5 Years

External hard drives havemany uses.

Can you use it forever?

Definitely, the answer is no.How long do external hard drives last?

safely remove the external hard drive

The average external hard drive lifespan is about3 to 5 years, provided that no physical damage occurs.

How do these factors affect external hard drive lifespan?

Lets see them one by one.

activate the Surface Test feature

Brand

Similarly, the brand of drive also makes a difference.

Want to see more comparisons between Seagate Digital?

If yes, you might be interested inSeagate vs Western Digital What Are the Differences on Storage.

start scanning the disk

Size

It is hard to explain the relationship between hard drive size and hard drive lifespan.

The environment is quite important.

Temperature, humidity, and dust can have a great influence on the external hard drive lifespan.

the scanning process

Dust should not be neglected.

How to Protect Your External Hard Drive from Failure?

This part offers eight suggestions on how to prolong the external hard drive lifespan.

click Defragment and optimize your drives

It is worth bearing them in your mind.

Moreover, do not power off your box when your external hard drive is working.

During working, it is in high-speed rotation.

click the Analyze button

If you power off your gear suddenly, the head and the platter will rub each other violently.

To avoid the damage, you should pay attention to theexternal hard diskindicator.

Fast flashing indicates that the external hard disk is reading and writing.

activate the Data Recovery function

Eject it safely before powering off your setup:

This is to prevent potential data corruption.

How to safely remove it on Windows 10 computer?

Dont overload your external hard drive:

Do not fill your external hard drive with unwanted data.

click the Scan button

Delete the unwanted files as it reduces wear and tear it receives being over full.

Its feature Surface Test will scan the disk and mark thebad sectorsred.

Moreover, with this toolkit, you canback up your gear to an external hard diskwith ease.

scan the lost files from the selected disk

Step 1:Connect your external hard drive to a Windows PC.

Step 2:poke the following button to download MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Then, install it and launch it to get its main interface.

Highlight the disk and then chooseSurface Testfrom the left panel.

Step 4:Click theStart Nowbutton and the toolkit will scan the whole disk.

Step 5:Check the scan result.

The toolkit will mark the good sector as green and the bad sectors as red.

Disinfect External hard drive regularly:

Hard disks are usually the first victim of virus attacks.

Therefore, it is paramount to disinfect your external hard drive regularly.

To disinfect your external hard disk, you could use antivirus software.

Defrag your external hard drive periodically:

Defragment can secure your external hard drive from failure.

How to do that?

The tutorial is below.

Step 1:pop in Control Panel in the Cortanas search bar to openControl Panel.

Step 2:SelectSystem & Securityfrom the Control Panel window.

Step 3:Move to the Administrative Tools section and click Defragment and optimize your devices.

Step 4:go for the partition you want to analyze and then click theAnalyzebutton.

Step 5:You will get a report that indicates if you gotta defrag your disk.

If you gotta defrag your disk, click theOptimizeoption.

Are there anysigns indicating hard drive failure?

How to keep external hard drives from failure?

There are eight tips.Click to Tweet

How to Deal with Unusable External Hard Drives?

If your external hard drive is too old, you should carefully deal with it.

As to data recovery, it is highly recommended that you try MiniTool Partition Wizard.

This toolkit can help retrieve data from formatted disk, virus attacked disk, and even corrupted disk.

Step 2:Connect your external hard drive to your Windows PC.

Step 4:Wait patiently during the scanning result.

When it ends, go for the files you need and then click theSavebutton.

How do external hard drives last?

This post answers the question.

Does SSD last longer than HDD?

c’mon readHow to Know Your SSDs Lifespan and How to Increase Its Lifeto get the answers.

Final Thoughts

How do external hard drives last?

How Long Do External Hard Drives Last FAQ

There are 8 tips: