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If data happened to be accessed in a random fashion on a magnetic hard drive for long sustained periods, could this lead to a much earlier failure of the device?

Ideally, data is accessed in contiguous blocks. But suppose an application is very poorly designed and stores and access data on the drive in very random way leading to many seeks and transfers of individual data blocks.

dave
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    I disagree with @FrankThomas for perhaps the first time ever. One of the (lesser) reasons for defragmenting a hard disk is to lessen the amount of travel required by read/write heads (needle) inside the disk. This has been proven to lengthen the drive's lifespan. You can see the difference in the mechanism when "thrashing" (like random access would create) and standard use with an opened drive. Thrashing is certainly making the mechanism work harder. How significant? I don't know but more than none. Any mechanical thing can apply this same principal. – Señor CMasMas Sep 01 '22 at 18:07
  • Oh and it isn't the platters spinning that is the problem. It is the needle/head mechanism that this wears on. – Señor CMasMas Sep 01 '22 at 18:15
  • "*could this lead to a much earlier failure of the device?*" -- "*Much earlier*"? Not likely, servo-controlled voice-coil actuators are far less likely to wear out than platter surface damage to vibrations and shock. You're more likely to get end-of-life indicators like minor, random data loss than a catastrophic failure of the drive. "*Ideally, data is accessed in contiguous blocks*" -- The concern is for avoiding longer/slower access times, rather than wearing out the drive. Anyone who thinks that a HDD has a "*needle*" doesn't understand how they work. – sawdust Sep 02 '22 at 01:07
  • You cannot avoid "*random access*" when using a HDD; that is its primary feature, i.e. it's a *random-access storage device*. The layout of the typical *filesystem* imposes the use of random accesses. See https://superuser.com/questions/344534/why-does-copying-the-same-amount-of-data-take-longer-if-spread-across-many-separ/344860#344860 to understand that a *file* is much more than just its data blocks. – sawdust Sep 02 '22 at 01:22

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