[mythtv-users] OT: Seagate to reduce warranties on consumer drives to 3 years from 2009

[f-myth-users at media.mit.edu]

    > Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:38:46 -0500
    > From: "Michael T. Dean" <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>

    > And, now, the clicking Hitachi has resulted in another 1.5TB HDD 
    > purchase and rolling a 330 GB HDD down for the main desktop--but it's 
    > not yet in there (as I was trying to determine if the failures are due 
    > to something in the system).

Vibration?

Maybe a bad fan is vibrating something badly, or the machine is
getting externally jostled from a big subwoofer or heavy trucking
traffic or a rambuctious kid and an insufficiently-damped floor.

(I'm thinking maybe power, maybe heat, maybe vibration as the three
things likely to kill a disk.  And contamination with certain gases
that are quite unlikely to be found in a household and would have lead
to the quick death of -every- drive in the house, not just some of 'em...)

P.S.  I'm assuming your setup never has anything touching or resting
on the top (all-metal) surface of the drive; apparently that's quite
a fragile place to exert downward force according to the vendors...