Google has issued a paper on the reliability of certain types of hard drives named Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. Engadget sums up the study via Slashdot saying the following:
- Studied a hundred thousand SATA and PATA drives with between 80 and 400GB storage and 5400 to 7200rpm
- 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags
- Patterns showed that failure rates are indeed definitely correlated to drive manufacturer, model, and age
- Failure rates did not correspond to drive usage except in very young and old drives
- There is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates than might have been expected
- Drives that are cooled excessively actually fail more often than those running a little hot