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Originally Posted by Tannin
This depends on three main factors:
1: The way the drives are handled, both in the wharehouse/distribution channel and by the installation technician. Hard drives are very sensitive to shock, and although a nasty bump very rarely shows up with an immediate failure, it greatly increases the risk of failure later on. Many people don't fully realise this and pay only lip service to what is, in reality, the #1 rule of hard drive safety - treat them like they were made out of eggshells! This is why we only ever buy drives from a known and trusted distributor with a track record of doing it right, and even then always buy more than 10 units at once. (Hard drives come ex factory in boxes of 20. If you order 5 drives or 9, the warehouse guy takes them out of the box, maybe packs them properly, maybe doesn't, maybe bangs them down on his desk, maybe doesn't, then ships them to you. If you buy (e.g.) 15 drives, human nature being what it is, the warehouse guy takes the other five drives out of the box and your 15 stay nice and safe in the factory carton, which is proof against even couriers and truck drivers. Best, of course, is to simply buy a box of 20.) Obviously, you don't want 20 hard drives - but you can buy your drive from someone who does buy them that way, and who knows how important it is to look after them.
2: The quality of the drives used. There are major differences in reliability between different brands of drive. Seagate/Maxtor and Western Digital drives have a failure rate measured in units per hundred, typically a modest single-digit number per hundred, but higher for a bad model. Samsung drives have a failure rate measured in units per thousand, and it's a small single digit. I don't see enough Hitachi drives to put a number on their RMA rate, but it's probably closer to the Samsung figure than the Seagate/WD one. (Just guessing on this last.)
3: Clint's Rule. ("Do I feel lucky?")
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