Hard drives are like the forgotten teammate no one wants to play with because they're old and can't keep up with others anymore. SSDs have outclassed HDDs in speed, efficiency, and reliability, with the latter remaining useful for a select few use cases. HDDs might be nearing obsolescence for the vast majority of PC users, but the myths surrounding them refuse to die down.

These myths are rooted in anecdotes, assumptions, and premature declarations about HDDs. If you happen to believe in any of these myths, don't beat yourself too much about it; at least, this way, you're keeping the forgotten teammate in your thoughts.

5 Formatting an HDD deletes data permanently

You probably know this isn't true

Each of us has formatted hard drives more than once in the past, but some of us still believe that formatting deletes data permanently. After all, that's what Windows says whenever you're about to click that final OK button. It turns out that while formatting appears to remove all the data present on a hard drive, making it ready for use again, the only deletion that's happening here is of the file system.

Formatting removes the references to the data that allow Windows to locate the data on the hard drive, but doesn't actually delete the data itself. Only when you overwrite the HDD with new data is the previous data gone for good. Whether you use the "Quick Format" or "Full Format" options, data can still be recovered from the HDD, with the latter just making it more difficult. Commonly available programs like EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can recover almost all the data present on a formatted HDD.

If you want to be sure no one can recover your data from a discarded drive, you need to use a secure wipe method, such as Darik's Boot and Nuke.

4 HDDs can last forever when not in use

Bit rot is real

HDDs are notorious for failing around the 5-year mark, with many users reporting problems within 3 years of usage. You might think that using your HDD minimally or disconnecting it entirely from your system would extend its lifespan indefinitely, but other factors are also at play. Even when an HDD is not in use, it can experience data decay (bit rot) due to environmental factors like temperature changes, humidity, and dust.

Magnetic interference can also disrupt the data stored on the platters, while physical wear and tear like vibrations and shocks can also induce lasting damage. This is why the storage conditions of HDDs are important to preserve data for a longer period. Even if you're maintaining your HDD with the utmost care, regular health checks are essential for data integrity, so you can offload any essential data in case of faults with the HDD.

3 Freezing a defective drive will repair it

Old wives' tale?

Years ago, people used to freeze faulty hard drives in an attempt to restore temporary functionality. While this may have worked to some degree for some users, freezing a hard drive can also lead to condensation, which could make matters worse for you. Temperature changes might have revived older HDDs, but modern drives have higher tolerances, so freezing them is more likely to damage them instead of repairing anything.

If you want to revive an unresponsive internal HDD, try using a USB enclosure to connect it to your PC externally. You might be able to access the data long enough to transfer it to a working drive.

2 External and internal drives are identical

Appearances can be deceiving

They might appear functionally the same, but external and internal drives have a few differences. You might think an external drive is simply an internal drive in a case, but they often have lower-quality SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) disks that can be slower as well as less reliable than CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) disks.

Another difference is the kind of connectors used on some external HDDs. Proprietary USB-to-SATA adapters make it harder to recover data if the case or enclosure fails. Internal HDDs have conventional SATA connectors, are more flexible, and provide higher reliability for intensive use.

1 HDDs are obsolete in 2025

Oh, my sweet summer child

Hard drives might lose to SSDs in the speed, reliability, and efficiency departments, but they still offer a much better cost per TB at larger capacities. Just look at the price of 8TB HDDs, SATA SSDs, and NVMe SSDs. You'll see your cost rise from around $120 to $400 to over $600. That's a fortune to pay for storage for those who simply want cheap secondary storage for their media files, backups, and other archival data.

Those using NAS devices are also much better off with hard drives, both from cost and reliability perspectives. HDDs are still very much alive for certain use cases, and unless SSDs get significantly cheaper, they will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Forget the myths, not the drive

HDDs stopped being popular long ago, but they still have their place in modern systems, especially for users who need tons of affordable storage. Thanks to a long period of existence without any SSDs to compete with, HDDs have cultivated a veritable list of myths, many of which persist to this day. While I've listed 5 of them above, there are many others that you might still believe, such as "Higher RPM always means faster performance" and "You need to defragment an HD regularly".