Drives don't have a set lifetime. HOWEVER the more they are on the less lhey live as well as the fact that external issues like bumping and dropping and power surges can damage them. If I'm right you probably don't have a lot of time. You ignore this at the risk of losing everything. After drive dies Ontrack Data Recovery can get them back but its not cheap. $350 diagnostic and $3600 for recovery. If they can recover data from the space shuttle that fell from the sky they can recover your data but at a very expensive cost. [URL]#  
Hello, Friends. I have a Dell XPS8700 (about 8 years old) with Windows7.  I have a large collection of pictures and videos.  Yesterday, suddenly, my picture and video tiles started not showing thumbnails (most of them).  This came on suddenly.  I open a file and sometimes a green bar begins progressing left to right in that little space at the top.  A few pic tiles show thumbnails, but not many.  I've checked the "file/folder options"..."Always show icons, never thumbnails"...yep...it is unchecked.  I've tried (several times):  disk cleanup...clear thumbnail cache...sometimes this has worked, partially, but, then it reverts to the same ol' no thumbnails (standard icon or not even the icon) again.  For some folders, the even the default icon doesn't show...just blank rectangles with filenames underneath.     So...I'm at a loss.  Can anyone help me?  Thanks in advance for your kind assistance.   
pictures won't show thumbnails