Hit 10,000 hard drive swaps this month and I had to sit down

I've been running a small computer repair shop out of my garage for about 8 years now. Last Tuesday I replaced a 1TB Seagate in a Dell Optiplex and realized it was my 10,000th drive swap. That number includes everything from old IDE drives to modern NVMe sticks. I started keeping a log just for warranty claims and it accidentally turned into a milestone tracker. It really made me think about how much data has passed through my hands over the years. Has anyone else ever counted up a specific repair stat and been surprised at the number?

2 comments

2 Comments

piper_reed1mo ago

Between counting my steps and my pizza slices, sounds about right for my repair bench too honestly.

jakeb251mo ago

That stat is insane to think about. @piper_reed I saw a post the other day from some data recovery guy who said he's seen over 50,000 drives total but never actually counted the swaps like that. It makes me wonder what the most common failure point you've run into is across those 10,000 drives. I remember reading that Seagate had a bad batch of 1.5TB drives back in like 2010 or 2011 that tanked their reliability numbers for years. Your log probably tells a whole story about which brands and models held up and which ones were basically ticking time bombs.