i wouldnt think a hdd being used would cause it to break, even being used a lot. its truthfully what hdds are designed to do (i know thats stating the obvious), but, they usually have a warranty of 3 years or 5 years and such, or rated at least 1 million hours of use on average before failure (mtbf)... so IF it does fail within the warranty period, you can always rma it anyhow. but, as far as memory, i would invest in more memory if you think what you have isnt enough
I agree with the poster above me, I have a feeling though that as with any mechanical device the less you use it the longer it should last (in thoery at least anyway)
I think having a ton of RAM is always a good thing anyway
todays hdds are well prepared for intensive work.
in the past i saw a bunch of 2 gb and 4gb drives dying on 32 mb PCs, and i bet that i was because of the nonstop swapping. ahh the magical (blargh) noise of a harddrive, reading\writing..
Yet, such swap can not be compared with the possible swap you referring, unless you're runnings todays apps on a 128 mb pc
Using Windows or even Linux without enough RAM will cause it to start paging the HD all the time. Not only it will make your PC slow and miserable, it will also make it noisy, and hot and yes the HD's life span is getting smaller and smaller as long as it keeps spinning. Data corruption is more likely to occur due to overheating and the constant read-writing over and over. Thankfully todays hard drives come with perpendicular technology to prevent data corruption and some come with Enterprise environment firmwares to prolong even further their lifetime when constantly switched on (but still not when constantly read-writing).
So get some RAM and a new Perp. tech drive and you will feel a little bit safer!
Overall, drive failure involves a bit of luck, good or bad. I had one drive that died within 3 months of casual usage (a Seagate). On the other hand, my IBM Deskstar 75GPX from 2000 is still working strong even after continual usage since the first day.
Drives are made for continual usage. While it's good to have 1GB or 2GB of RAM to decrease file swapping, I don't think that will extend the life of the hard drive by much.
