Volvo 850 T5

I agree with this post. There used to be a difference, some drives would fail early. Now they all fail in about a year if used 24/7, or so it seems to me.

In my experience, it's totally random :)

We have drives that fail after a week, drives that fail after a year, and drives that fail after five years.

I've just bin doing some HDD failure analysis, coincidentally. Maxtor had a problem with drives produced within a certain period last year, where the write heads overheated, causing the fly-height to drop and the heads to impact on the platter. Not good, and largely responsible for thier current reputation. They have remedied this now, and according to the data there is very little to choose between the manufacturers, with Seagate being slightly better (0.1% AFR). In a PC type application you can expect 1.5-2% for 5400rpm and

Andy