1 year late. better late than never.
Most failures of HDD are caused by bad power. #2 is heat over 40C?, #3 is shock (mostly laptops). or dropped external drives.
if the power to the logic is wrong the logic, fails. that is your job and that includes noise. So can a bad sata cable or unbuffered sata ports with a non powered drive in parallel. "cheap motorboards" do not leave non powered HDD , plugged in digitally. Some Sata chips are flawed, (mobos)
the old 2004 bridge Sata-Pata can be a pain to set up. RTM.
The same on new board, some SATA conn. are RAID only ! RTM.
RTMB ,read the mother board manual.?
IF you run the HDD in a system with a quality 500 ++ watt PSU , (some made in the country of clones, are crap "C4") and with a UPS the drives don't .fail.
Read the data sheet on the drive, see those numbers for power, take that to the bank... no lie. Its not a rumor it's electronic performance..
most beefs , are from users not knowing what they are doing, consumers....
did you ever consider reading Seagate's QA program? check that out. It is a very well tested product and is QA tested and certified.
the #1 killer is, voltage sags, and spikes. (avoid green drives,)
I have installed only Seagate my whole life (retired now) vast numbers deployed.
For sure anything can fail, and at any time but most are like humpty dumpty, he was pushed. read the spec, and respect it.
and point 2, you can read anything on the internet, and why do that. why not ask a real tech that works these issues every day.
I had one customer running 5 PCs off one wall jack. funny that!
and refuses to wire it right $$$ and down time , so we put in a huge 3kw UPS.
He has full voltlage down to 50vac on the lines.
He was popping HDD (all brands) every 30days. after 5 years and a UPS, zero fails.
here is just certificate of many. read up on how hard it is to get that.... you will be surprised.
http://www.seagate.com/www-content/about/global-citizenship/en-us/docs/iso-9001/seagate-510982-028-science-park-cert-iso-9001-2008.pdf
and you said no info on reliability, ever try seagate.com?
The old name was MTBF. mean time before failure.
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/174791en?language=en_US
note it doesn't cover, shipper dropping it from 12feet
nor user running it on 4.5v or 5.5v.
the data manual is here, in the chapter under Reliability. no less
page 12 work load
http://www.seagate.com/files/staticfiles/support/docs/manual/desktop/Desktop%20HDD%20Gen%2015/100710254-rev-c.pdf
ESD damage?
flying over 10,000 feet, (no cabin pressure) the heads do stop flying and do crash.
one way to get in trouble is running a very fast power hungry video card GPU. some really suck the current and can very easily over load (gaming?)
the weak PSU, get the best PSU , you can find, in higherwattage rating (most times this gets quality) and you might win the power battle.
many consumers think they can just bolt anything together , and is far off the mark.
IMO,
BTW2:
I see posts that say, BIOS does not recognize my Sata drive
why, and why it must. the drive motor can be dead and the drive will
be seen, because PnP chip reports if only 5v is present.
and that takes catastrophic logic failure.
1: BIOS set for SATA , disable, many BIOS older this is common
2: running old BIOS mobo that was never update flashed.
3: 5v not 5v, but say below 4.75v, oops, why is that PSU bad?
4: bad HDD, dead last. very very rare for PNP to go DEAD.