What is the average lifespan of a hard disk?

What is the typical lifespan of a Western Digital Hard Disk?

• I have an external Hard disk (EHD) which I bought from Western DIgital. Its 500GB and It has been with me for 5 years now! I never dropped it and it works perfectly fine. The only concern I has it when will it start to fail? How long does western EHD last? I only use it for about 2-3 times a month.

• Answer:

  There is no definitive answer to your question. Hard drives generally fail due to mishandling rather than component failures these days. Something you should consider though is to back up your hard drive to another drive which is not stored in the same building. This gives you a second backup that may survive other catastrophes such as fire, earthquake etc. Just because you only use a drive 2-3 times a month doesn't mean it is going to last longer than one that is used many times a day.