average life of hard drive?

[applesucker]

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average life of an ipod hard drive?

[r3c]

it depends on how you use it, just be carefull on iy,

[micumouse]

it depends on how you use it, just be carefull on iy,

Yep. It depends on how many hours you use it. If you've dropped it while the ipod is reading something in the hard drive, there's a greater probability that the ipod would be damaged. I made a google search on this topic. There's an article here that discusses that.

iPod: Consumers’ Rights or Misconceptions?


Now let’s look at the hard drive inside the iPod. Hard drives are manufactured to a specification of how many hours they can (hopefully) perform before breaking. Hard drives are NOT manufactured to last forever, despite some consumers’ very odd misconceptions about electronics. Like cars, they contain moving parts, and like life itself, anything that moves wears and decays. The expected life-span of a hard drive is three to five years. However, this is the life-span of a large hard drive, such as one you put into a desktop computer. The ones that go into iPods are miniature hard drives that are much more intricate and far more difficult to manufacture. The manufacturers know it and Apple knows it: these puppies are unlikely to make the three-year mark. In fact, while the large hard drives are rated to last 750,000 hours or more, these tiny hard drives are rated to last around 20,000 hours. Do the math.

Further, you need only drop an iPod while it is reading the hard drive and the head of the reading arm will bounce off the platters of the drive, either killing the drive outright or creating a bad portion (that will over time create more bad portions). Personally, I’ve dropped every iPod that I’ve owned; it’s very difficult not to. I’ve just been lucky that the hard drive wasn’t being read at the time.

[eydzhey]

hmmm. 3 years would be a safe number.

[jps444]

my ipod was bought around 3rd quarter of 2003. it's still good! considering all the punishment it has gone through with me hehehe!

[macky2green]

@micumouse
Thank you very much for the very rich information! This is the very same reason why I prefer to own a nano than a full-size iPod (flash memory vs hard drive). I don't even know why I purchased an iPod Classic 80GB silver when my old 1G 1GB iPod nano white still meets my needs. I hope they come out with a full-size iPod with flash memory, hopefully 80GB up.

[rdy0329]

The Nano Now is a full sized iPod but not that 80GB you say about, that's pretty expensive! I read on gizmodo that a 80GB of Flash memory is about 2,400 dollars do the math

[johnj2803]

also note that flash memories have more limited number of read-write cycles than HD based storage

[macky2green]

@rdy0329
@johnj2803
Thank you for the info, guys! Now, I'm more aware. I guess we just have to enjoy what we have - may it be a hard drive or a flash drive-based memory multimedia player or any other gadget for that matter.

[rdy0329]

no prob. My ipod is celebrating it's second year with me but I have the touch already... so... that's that... good luck...

@threadstarter - now you know...