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A comment on Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration dates?. Parent comment

Re:Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration d... by Swizec on Friday February 07, 2020 @12:53PM (#22268681)
Seatbelts too. And airbags.

Afaik you're supposed to replace those every 10 years or so. Most people of course don't.

Another good one most people forget: Hard drives last about 5 years. CD-Rs are rated for 10 years. A flash drive can go for 10 years. SSD holds data for about 2 years.

The electronics themselves in many modern consumer devices are basically kaput after 4 to 5 years.

Point is you are likely overestimating the lifespan of your devices even without taking software into account.

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Re:Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration d... by JohnFen on Friday February 07, 2020 @01:01PM (#22268781)
> Hard drives last about 5 years.

I've often heard this, but I regularly use hard drives for much longer than that. I've only ever had one fail.

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Re:Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration d... by winternett on Friday February 07, 2020 @01:47PM (#22269259)
SSDs now though may likely change that. If they fail early, they were likely manufactured to do so, or there was some other issue like power surges.
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Re:Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration d... by JohnFen on Friday February 07, 2020 @02:12PM (#22269589)
True, but I'm not yet comfortable with using SSDs for anything of importance.
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Re:Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration d... by tluyben2 on Friday February 07, 2020 @03:42PM (#22270697)
Hard drives 5 years; yeah it happens but then usually fast after active use: if they do not fail fast then they usually keep going. I have 100s of HD's here from 25 to a few years ago and most of them work fine. Especially the 90s/00s then-expensive scsi discs do not seem to fail. But cheap internal and external HD's from that time are also still all working. If they get beyond 5 years (and by far most do), they get to 20. Anecdotal ofcourse.
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Re:Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration d... by winternett on Friday February 07, 2020 @06:12PM (#22272185)
Don't worry, all the other peripherals will lose driver support, and your processor will crack long before 5 years anyway... Hah.
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Re:Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration d... by tluyben2 on Saturday February 08, 2020 @12:21AM (#22274087)
New stuff will; (unix) workstations and servers from 20-25 years ago are running fine inc all hds.
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