Noisy hard drive?

As I said in my comment reply to Max, "Where have I heard that story before?"

I did the math.

For 5.5 years, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, I talked to an average of 40 people a day who needed data recovery. About half of them had hard drives that made unusual noises. (Maybe more than that, but I'll be conservative here.)

I took 3 months off when S was born.
I spent another 3 months working half time.

For the last 3 years in my new role at work, I've spoken to an average of 20 people a day who needed recovery (though this number is ramping up daily), and I'd say more than half of them - probably 15 of 20 - had at least one drive (in a RAID/NAS array/device) that made bad noises.

I've taken about 21 weeks of vacation/personal time apart from maternity leave in the last 8.5 years. Add to that another (on average) 7 days of paid holidays per year.

So if I'm doing this right:
(20 people a day x 20 workdays a month x 12 months a year x 5.5 years) + (15 people a day x 20 workdays a month x 12 months a year x 3 years)

less
(20 people a day x 5 days a week x 21 weeks personal time off) + (20 people a day x 7 days a year x 8.5 years holidays) + (20 people a day x 20 workdays a month x 3 months maternity leave) + (10 people a day x 20 workdays a month x 3 months for the half-time)

Which means I've talked to about 32,110 people who have a story about a noisy drive.

And I'm just one person answering the phone at our company, and we're just one company (the best, true, but just one) that does data recovery, and only the people who know about data recovery as an option or who care enough about their data to look into it call us.

Considering all the hard drives out there, it's not as though they're really failing left and right. But a drive is, as I've said one or two (thousand) times, a "man made object with parts that are microns from one another moving very, very fast." And it's subject to failure just like any machine.


Back up your files.

Before you become another part of my crazy middle-of-the night statistics.


(Apologies to those of you who have already had to go through the horrific experience of data loss. I didn't mean to make you revisit your pain.)