HDD failures, a Conspiracy Theory

[KingArcher]

Have you noticed more number of hard drives failing recently than yesteryears?
Do you think, HDD manufacturers have a devious plan, like world domination...something like "Pink and the Brain"?
The reason I brought this up is cause if you look at the statistics there is an alarming number of drives failing.
And it fails within the first few weeks of purchase. Most of the owners send their drives back for replacement.
Can you imagine the amount of data they could collect from these drives?

They have a copy of all your data.

I'd suggest we start building powerful electromagnets like "MRI machines" at home and send these drives through them before sending it back for RMA

I'd also like to hear your thoughts on this.

 

[Pyroflea]

While I wouldn't doubt this theory for one second, there are factors that contribute to the high number of drive failures. If you've noticed, the vast majority of failures are on drives >500GB. The larger drives generally have more platters, and high storage density. Higher density means that the head needs to be even more accurate to read even smaller areas. This improved accuracy generally leads to even more delicate mechanisms which are prone to vibrations, bumps, etc.

 

[sminlal]

I now have seven drives that are 1TB or more and haven't had any failures at all. I certainly haven't seen any trend that suggests drives are any less reliable now than they ever have been.