[Closed] Replacement HDD - how long would you leave it before wiping the old one?

Why, in case the SSD explodes or something, wiping all your data?
A few hours.
All the real IT bods will recommend proper backups though. Safe to ignore them 😉

Why, in case the SSD explodes or something, wiping all your data?

Yep - part of me (probably irrationally) thinks that it'd be more susceptible to catastrophic failure shortly after I've installed it, and if it makes it X amount of time, then it's fine to wipe the original.

X is what I'm after!

We (IT Support co.) tend to store them for 30 days before destruction. It's nothing to do with any "catastrophic failure" issues, in fact in the 8-9 years I've been here that's never happened and we must have replaced thousands of HDDs with SSDs in that time. They do fail sometimes, but after a couple of years of service.

We tend to keep them for that one time an end user will call up panicking because some odd bit of data didn't copy over for whatever reason (it's usually some non-work thing they've kept on their desktop) we've got back-ups of everything but it's a quicker fix from the old disc sometimes.

If it works out the box, it'll work for a long time. My opinion is that it either won't work at all or will work normally.

But yeah, backups etc anyway.

We tend to keep them for that one time an end user will call up panicking because some odd bit of data didn’t copy over for whatever reason (it’s usually some non-work thing they’ve kept on their desktop) we’ve got back-ups of everything but it’s a quicker fix from the old disc sometimes.

Thanks - everything important is generally cloud backed up and it was a complete disc clone so nothing likely to go missing.

in the 8-9 years I’ve been here that’s never happened and we must have replaced thousands of HDDs with SSDs in that time. They do fail sometimes, but after a couple of years of service.

If it works out the box, it’ll work for a long time. My opinion is that it either won’t work at all or will work normally.

Thanks - fears alleviated somewhat then!

Just to follow up on this - Crucial SSD installed in October, and it’s just failed this morning.

Laptop won’t boot and when put into recovery mode it won’t even recognise there’s a drive in there at all.

I DO have reasonably regular weekly backups and most of my work is via a Remote Desktop anyway, but it is still a huge pain.

Thus far, not overly impressed with my first SSD experience!!

I thought Crucial was one of the better brands - can anyone recommend an alternative? Samsung?

Sounds like you just got really unlucky. Should be under warranty though.
I have a mixure of Samsung and Kingston SSDs and I put a Western digital in my Nans machine for what it's worth.

Thanks, I’m sure there won’t be a problem getting it replaced, I’d just like to avoid it happening again!!

If it works out the box, it’ll work for a long time.

There's a U-shaped curve of failure. High rate of failure early on due to manufacturing faults, etc., then long period of low rate of failure, then failure rate dramatically increases due to old age. Using cloud services like Dropbox to back up and sync data takes most of the pain out of failures though.

Really weird - it’s back now! I’ve done nothing to it, MacRecovery didn’t work and couldn’t identify the drive.

Then it’s just binged and started up as normal.

REALLY really strange. Never had anything like that before.

why wipe it?
presumably you've physically removed it and it sat on your desk and mirrors the ssd.
I get your idea about using it as a backup drive, but how expensive is a 2.5hdd really?
Put it in a box, write what it is and put it on a shelf and forget about it
Just in case?
Or buy a cheapy usb caddy for it, and make periodic updates to it?
If you want to make timemachine backups you would be better getting some network attached storage, and setting it up to make updates in the background periodically (once a week?) Then if your machine dies, or blows up, or gets stolen, you can still restore to a new device.

Really weird – it’s back now! I’ve done nothing to it, MacRecovery didn’t work and couldn’t identify the drive.

Then it’s just binged and started up as normal.

Sounds to me like you may not have pressed home a connection fully? Moving the laptop around means it is missing or making the connection. Maybe lift the back off again and check?

Just to follow up on this – Crucial SSD installed in October, and it’s just failed this morning.

Anecdotally, the only SSD drives we've had fail at work are Crucial ones, and the Crucial that I bought for personal use died a death too.

I but anything but crucial now - Sandisk/Kingston/Samsung are all working fine, touch wood. I've a couple of gigabyte nvme drives, but they're new enough that the jury is still out on them.

EDIT:

Then it’s just binged and started up as normal.

My crucial drive did this, so I backed it up quick sharp. It lasted about a week before it went again. So I wiped it and reinstalled, it worked for a day or two then went again, so I got shot of it.

Samsung?

Is the right answer.