Vista and Hard Drives

captainwood2 · 14-01-2012, 11:07

Hi there, I have a bit of a strange one but i wanted other peoples opinions and experiences of something i think i have noticed with vista and drives

I would say that drive failures are not a common feature on other operating systems yet they seem to happen alot with Vista!

Basically my point is hard drives seem to fail alot less on machines that do not have Vista on them and they generally seem to fail between the 1 - 2 year mark, has any one else noticed this or am i dreaming?

MoZaLaN · 14-01-2012, 11:47

When Vista crushes, machine shuts down for automatic restart or user has to press the power button for hard reset, which obviously kills the drive over time... For me, that's the main reason why Vista Hard Drives don't last very long...

So your observation is quite right..

neeeeeeeeeek · 14-01-2012, 11:53

Vista machines often only came with 1Gb RAM, it really needs 2Gb. As a result the drive is constantly being used as a swap file so disk activity is massively increased.

It could also be the first generation of bigger disks, which came in around the same time as Vista were more unreliable, or that you have just been unlucky!

captainwood2 · 14-01-2012, 12:39

Well i have only had one machine that it happend on and that had 4gb ram. I have since moved onto Windows 7 however, my observations of this are from other peoples machines i have noticed it on many and that even the earlier larger drives still only die with Vista and not with other os's. I just thought it was an interesting point and again highlights the awfulness of Vista, there is one thing i can say for it however, it made us forget about Windows ME haha!

MoZaLaN · 14-01-2012, 12:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by captainwood2

...however, it made us forget about Windows ME haha!

Very true

Durzo · 15-01-2012, 13:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoZaLaN

When Vista crushes, machine shuts down for automatic restart or user has to press the power button for hard reset, which obviously kills the drive over time... For me, that's the main reason why Vista Hard Drives don't last very long...

So your observation is quite right..

Its because Vista was so very poorly designed. Vista was just XP with a face lift, they didn't really change any of the core coding so when they added all these fancy displays and what not it caused Vista to constantly crash even on top end computers, Which inturn is what destroys everyone's hardrives.

dosxuk · 15-01-2012, 17:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoZaLaN

When Vista crushes, machine shuts down for automatic restart or user has to press the power button for hard reset, which obviously kills the drive over time... For me, that's the main reason why Vista Hard Drives don't last very long...

In what way?

I have several machines at work which have never been shutdown properly. They either hard reset themselves (watchdog card connected to the reset button), or are turned off by holding the power button down / by power cut. None of them have suffered a hard drive failure.

dosxuk · 15-01-2012, 17:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Durzo

Its because Vista was so very poorly designed. Vista was just XP with a face lift, they didn't really change any of the core coding so when they added all these fancy displays and what not it caused Vista to constantly crash even on top end computers, Which inturn is what destroys everyone's hardrives.

But Windows 7 is just Vista with added shinyness, there isn't any real changes to the core coding, just more fancy displays, which require even better computers. By your "logic" Windows 7 machines should be destroying even more hard drives.

probedb · 15-01-2012, 19:31

MoZaLaN, hard drives don't spin down on a reboot (i.e. automatic reboot on a blue screen or manual reboot) so it has no effect on HDD wear. The drive will only spin down if you have to fully power off and switch on again. Hitting the reset button does not power down the drive. Stop trying to scare people.

Durzo, as dosxuk says, Vista was a rebuild from the ground up, it is not XP with a facelift, Vista has been tagged as Win 7 beta for a reason.

To the OP, you're just imagining it

Through Win 98, XP and 7 I've never experienced a single drive failure. My machine at work runs Vista and is on 24/7 5 days a week and has been for the past 2 years....as are most machines in the office, not one failure. In fact the only person I know who it happened to is my father and he was on XP at the time.

MoZaLaN · 15-01-2012, 20:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by probedb

..Stop trying to scare people....

Huh, are you scared?... hooh... what about now?..

We all sharing what we think.. no one tries scaring anyone here, you stop making fun of yourself and be kind.

captainwood2 · 16-01-2012, 09:44

To each there own opinion i guess. Running a computer shop i see alot more machines than your average user and this is where i am refering to the drive failures coming more from Vista than any other OS.

probedb · 16-01-2012, 12:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoZaLaN

Huh, are you scared?... hooh... what about now?..

We all sharing what we think.. no one tries scaring anyone here, you stop making fun of yourself and be kind.

No, you're implying that Vista results in more HDD failures because it shuts down on reboots/blue screens.

Quote:

When Vista crushes, machine shuts down for automatic restart or user has to press the power button for hard reset, which obviously kills the drive over time

Which is incorrect. Not everyone who uses this section is very tech savvy, they might see your message and assume their HDD is going to break because they have Vista.

captainwood2, our dev team has rather a lots of heavily used PCs all running Vista and not one HDD failure. Plus I've never heard of anyone mentioning that anywhere until you posted this.

As you say, different experiences!