A study by Secure Data Recovery showed that, in general, hard disk drives (HDDs) manufactured before 2015 appear to be more durable and flexible than newer products. The study included an analysis of the 2007 damaged or malfunctioning device received by the data recovery company in 2022.
The company attributes the difference in durability to pressure from manufacturers to increase storage capacities and access speeds, leading to difficult design decisions and tradeoffs. Modern hard drives are limited in size, so they need to be more compact, which can cause mechanical damage and wear.
HDD drives were analyzed based on the number of engineer-verified wake-up hours, the number of available pending sectors of the drive, and other factors related to performance and durability. The sample included Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung and Maxtor brands with capacities ranging from 40GB to 10TB.
SMR and CMR technologies
Until 2015, HDDs used Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) technology, where information was recorded on separate, parallel paths on the hard drive. The method has been replaced by Fragmented Magnetic Recording (SMR), which records data in overlapping tracks, enabling volumes with over 20TB of storage.
Although SMR technology can offer higher storage capacity, the solution has some disadvantages over CMR technology. SMR-capable hard drives are more vulnerable to logical errors due to the complex design that can lead to faster degradation and shortened disk life.
Source: Tec Mundo
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