Power on time and start/stop cylces are for reference only.
The only way to know if it is wearing out is retry counts, bad sectors or excessive noise.

As it says, you drive is "perfect"

If it sounds like an old refrigerator, It might be time to change it.
But they can keep running for a long time sounding like that.
It all depends on if you can stand the noise 🤣 .
If its making alot clicking sounds at boot or coming out of standby. I'd worry about putting anything important on that drive.

+1 to AlphaWing. I've got some pretty ancient drives that show even higher power-on time and start counts, but are still properly quiet and reliable.

It sounds nice and silent.

How long do these things last?

I don't think there's any pre-determined value for how long they're able to last - the oldest drive I have is from the late 1990s and still works, and I know people who have drives probably a decade older than that that will still spin up and run. On the other hand, I've trashed newer drives that've failed in normal operation after only a few years. My general feeling is not to leave any important data on only one drive/device - even brand new hardware - and then if the hardware fails all you're "out" is the hardware, and not any data.

obobskivich wrote:

I don't think there's any pre-determined value for how long they're able to last - the oldest drive I have is from the late 1990s and still works, and I know people who have drives probably a decade older than that that will still spin up and run. On the other hand, I've trashed newer drives that've failed in normal operation after only a few years. My general feeling is not to leave any important data on only one drive/device - even brand new hardware - and then if the hardware fails all you're "out" is the hardware, and not any data.

^ This. I have a 1990 80MB IDE drive and it works perfectly and I have had laptop drives die in two years

I understand for older drives, because of much better build quality. But because of frequent fail rate with newer drives is why i am concerned.

Stojke wrote:

I understand for older drives, because of much better build quality. But because of frequent fail rate with newer drives is why i am concerned.

I wouldn't say older drives have "much better build quality" - that's too general. There have been winners and losers across all time - I think the difference today is that everyone is on the Internet and you hear all of the dissatisfied and upset customers (who readily use social media as a pulpit and bullhorn all at once), so it can make a relatively low (like a few % or less) fail rate look like a "huge pandemic problem" compared to years ago when not many folks were online, and even fewer were plugged into "social media product reviewing" and whatnot.

My point is, if the drive isn't malfunctioning or making bad noises, it's probably okay. Nobody is going to be able to definitively tell you the day and time it will eventually break - but that will happen eventually. Use it while it works, and make sure your data is backed up, and if and when you have to replace it, worry about that when it happens. 😊

I always find it interesting to look at the power on hours of my drives, but I haven't seen any consistent pattern to it. It's an age indicator, but it doesn't mean anything has failed or is about to. It's like knowing the miles/km (or in this case, also the startup cycles) on a used car, it's nice to know but it's far from definitive. There is some threshold where the manufacturer will flag it as "worn out", but that's not an actual failure. If it's still running perfectly I wouldn't worry about it, but of course important data should always have a backup, regardless.
I generally think of 20K hours as a drive that's becoming "old", but that's just me. With so few start/stop cycles it's probably easier on it.

In my extended family there's drives running daily at 30-40K hours, a pair at 60K hours, even one at over 80K hours with no errors logged.

A few of my drives developed problems at just over 20K hours. Not many less than that, other than lemons who didn't even get close. It seems 3-4 years has been the typical life span of my primary desktop drives - the old 5 year warranties were convenient.
The worst problems I had with drives was back in the late 90s/early 00s. It got better when I started paying attention to the quality of my PSU and drive cooling.

My very old Conner 40MB and 240MB drives still work, but I don't think they were stressed the same as today. No idea how many hours they were used, but I'm sure the 40MB wasn't very many. When it retired, it stayed retired, it wasn't worth reusing for anything.
I remember hating Western Digital because of the terribly short life span of my 1.6GB "Caviar". Found out only recently they were well known as defective.

Most of mine tend to have 40,000+ hours on them. The longest running drive I have seen was a 1tb early sata1 WD Black with only 6 starts and 8 years of non-stop running in a server. It sounded like a freight train taking off and when held in my hand hooked up to an external power adapter it produced enough force that I could not turn it to the side. So, ya you might be good for a week or another decade even! 😀