Windows 10: Backblaze: Hard Drive Stats for Q2 2016

Read more: Hard Drive Failure Rates: The Results from 68,813 Hard Drives

:)

 

Is Windows 10 causing early HD failures

Yes, I checked out BackBlaze and their stats indicated that the drive that failed in my HP was actually pretty low in failure rates. I've seen a few forums addressing failures and some do question the big Win 10 updates as possibly finishing off a weak
or defective drive. Anyway, HP replaced mine with a HGST 7200 RPM vs the old WD 5400 so at least its a better drive. Could be just a fluke but certainly I think Win 10 is a very busy OS for the storage drive from my observations.

 

Is there a preferred type of external hard drive to use for backing up a complete Windows system ?

Really it's a matter of how much do you care about risk? After 5 years, studies show that you have more than a 1-in-10 chance of your drive spontaneously failing that year. Which is actually only double from the first few years when it's already over 5%
chance annual failure rate. No one really appreciates how fragile storing your data on only a single drive is. You're basically saying "it's okay to lose this at anytime".

I personally don't think it's ever acceptable to have only one copy of important files. When a drive dies, it usually gives no warning.

Now I do agree with you that you should expect it to last longer, and these statistics show that you have basically a 90% chance of being just fine doing that. It's kind of like thunderstorm forecasts call for a chance of rain, but the hidden subtext of
how they can "right" so much is that the real forecast is "x % chance of thunderstorms occurring
within 25 nautical miles of a given point within this forecast area". So yeah, but that definition you can be pretty spot on.





*Stats vary, I used
this search query.