60% of failed external HDDs died within their first year

Secure Data Recovery analyzed 3,453 failed external hard drives: 60.8% had logged fewer than 8,760 power-on hours and 49.6% fewer than 4,380. In 27.2% of cases, SMART showed zero pending sectors before the failure.

• 60.8% of 3,453 drives failed before 8,760 power-on hours
• 49.6% never reached 4,380 hours; 76 drives died under 24 hours
• Average runtime was 15,961 hours, median just 4,559 hours
• 27.2% of failed drives showed zero pending sectors in SMART