Soccorro: Hi, I just got that Bluescreen again with the third HD in 2 years... Are HDDs really so prone to failure? I've checked my Ram, no errors. What other cause could there be? I mean come on, two toshiba HDDs failed within 2 months and the SSHD Im using now at least survived 1.5 years. Its a seagate by the way, if that is of any relevance.
Hard disks are very susceptible to vibration damage over time, even vibration of a fan or something on a desk, or the vibration of other fans/components inside the computer itself. Both constant small vibrations as well as jarring, bumps etc. Dropping things on one's desk, bumping the desk, slamming a desk drawer and other vibrations can reduce the life of a drive and end up with premature failure. If someone has an environment that is susceptible to vibration or bumping/jarring even in ways one would think are small and insignificant, it can damage drives over time. They remap bad sectors transparently to the operating system and you wont see errors until all of the remapping space is used up on the drive, then drive errors after that become OS visible bad sectors. High quality modern computer cases have added rubber anti-vibration grommets where the drives are attached in order to help minimize the problem, but not all computers have them.
Also, external hard drives are particularly vulnerable to vibration because of their inherent portability leads to higher likelihood of being physically moved around, pushed or pulled or having a pencil or something bounce off them etc. while they are running. Again, you generally will not see bad sectors visible to the OS right away because they get remapped.
Premature drive failure is usually linked to excessive vibration/jarring in this manner, so it's a good idea to have a setup that has the rubber grommets for the drives, make sure all drive screws are in place and not just one or two, and do everything possible to reduce internal case vibrations as well as vibrations that may come in contact with or near the computer, the desk it is on etc.
SSDs are not to my knowledge susceptible to vibration related issues but they are susceptible to unexpected power outage related problems. Intel drives are generally affected the least by this, but other brands may be affected more. There are research articles online about the phenomenon which are interesting reads.
Another problem that can affect both HDDs and SSDs is bad power. If the drives are not getting good clean power from a good PSU, they may end up having a shortened life span also. I've seen drives conk out from bad PSU issues before as well.
On a parting note, I can say one more thing about hard disks and branding. I've been building and using PCs for myself and others for 25 years roughly and have used pretty much the majority of brands of hard disks that have been in the marketplace all this time both from low end bargain/value type drives through mid to high end consumer drives and enterprise class drives. ATA/SATA/SCSI, you name it. The bottom line is that despite what any one person's advice might say to the contrary out there - there is no perfect hard drive company. If you ask 100 people what hard drives are the most reliable one person will tell you they've had hundreds of brand A drives for 20 years and never had a single drive fail and person B will tell you they've had nothing but problems with brand A's drives for 20 years and had every single drive fail. This will repeat through every single brand of drives there is so long as there are enough people following the conversation and participating. There is no hard disk company out there producing 100% rock solid drives on every model they make in every factory on every day without any duds. Every brand has produced duds or had problems from time to time and if someone gets one of them they'll swear off that brand forever to the end of time. Does anyone remember the good old IBM Deskstar from 12-13 years ago, a.k.a. the "Deathstar"? There you go. :)
So my advice is to ensure the computer case and desk area is free of vibrations and other shocks, use rubber grommets for attaching disks and ensure every single screw is tightened in all disks always, not just one to hold it in place but make it easier to remove - that will speed up the death of a drive. For brands, I would research online general consensus about current brands and models to see if there are particular models known to be duds at the moment, and avoid that drive or that brand for now and choose one that hasn't had duds in a while. But I'd also recommend avoiding brand loyalty or the false illusion that any given brand always produces stellar flawless products - they all produce crap sometimes.
Hope this helps.
