Does tiny 2.5 HDDs have such a short life?

Interesting that Toshiba publishes MTTF numbers for their 3.5" drives (600,000 hrs.), but not their 2.5" drives.

YanKleber said:

Around 3 years ago I bought a tiny notebook 500GB Seagate HDD tagged as "Video 2.5 HDD". I have no idea what the "video" thing supposed to mean. Anyway, at the time I plugged it into my desktop to function as a secondary drive (my primary one is a Crucial 240Gb SSD) and also I had a very old full-sized and noisy 320GB Samsung HDD functioning as a third drive.

Last week the tiny Samsung HDD died and so I bought a new 1 TB WD purple full-sized HDD to replace it. Curiously, my very old 320GB Samsung - that now is completing 14 years of reliable work - is still up and spinning and don't show the least sign of fatigue, no bad blocks, no nothing. It's just there fighting bravely.

My question is: I was unlucky to have the tiny disk dying so prematurely or it's really expected that those small guys long too much less than the full sized disks?

Thanks!

Well, I just looked up WD Black 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives, and they both have 5 year warranties.

bro67 said:

Yes platter drives tend to die in laptops because of the kindnof use and abuse they are put through.

I used to travel a lot, airplanes, hotels, meetings, you name it. I have had two platter drives die on me. I was able to get warranty replacements from HGST. But that was then. Now my laptop has an NVMe SSD and the next oldest laptop has a regular SSD.

Quieter, more reliable, better performance, and better battery life. It is only a matter of time (1-2-3 years) before 4 and 8 TB NVMe drives become affordable.

Perhaps it's because the smaller drives are being used in more portable devices and are more subject to environments that "impact" them? I have two Toshiba 1 TB USB portable 2.5" drives about a year old. I only use them for system image backups and they are treated gently.

A laptop has a small HDD (2.5") for two reasons:
- It's a laptop, doesn't have much space on it.
- A rotating disk has a gyroscopic effect, so they are smaller in diameter and spin slower (5.400 rpm) then a desktop HDD that spins at 7.000 or 10.000 rpm and have a bigger disk as a desktop HDD doesn't move around.

@YanKleber, a HDD is a mechanic and delicate device. All them will die one day. Yours just did.