Pretty obvious that life is shortened when running continuously. Figure 50k-100k hours total run time like most things with moving mechanical parts. 8760 hours per year and even cheap drives have a 3-year warranty = makers like WD give a high probability that it will last 26,280 hours and in practice it’s sometimes a factor of 2-4 longer (from my experience). Of course the usual retail outlet reviews don’t reflect that since the 1% of early deaths are the ones that scream the loudest when irreplaceable data is lost (their fault for not backing it up), along with the fact rough-handling during shipping it will shorten it’s life (reduced in recent years with better g-reducing air bags made just for HDD’s).

Pretty obvious that life is shortened when running continuously. Figure 50k-100k hours total run time like most things with moving mechanical parts. 8760 hours per year and even cheap drives have a 3-year warranty = makers like WD give a high probability that it will last 26,280 hours and in practice it’s sometimes a factor of 2-4 longer (from my experience). Of course the usual retail outlet reviews don’t reflect that since the 1% of early deaths are the ones that scream the loudest when irreplaceable data is lost (their fault for not backing it up), along with the fact rough-handling during shipping it will shorten it’s life (reduced in recent years with better g-reducing air bags made just for HDD’s).

Can you show this curve?

For me the question is: What drive should I buy for low cost. For you it is the same I think. As I have redundancy, I do not worry about failed drives too much, as long as they fail during the warranty.

So, I would exclude the first two years from the failure rate (or at least treat them differently).

Greetings,
Hendrik