I've never really had too much in the way of physical hard drive failures, with 2 exceptions. I had a 120mb (yes, MEGABYTE) conner die on me once (back on the good old 386dx40 days, but that probably doesn't count 🙂 and I had a 1 gig 1024mb Maxtor die once. My old machine has a 18 gig 7200 WD in it (best IDE drive available at the time) and its been running practically 24/7 for about 6 years now I think. It has been rock-solid, never a single problem at all, and now I'm pretty faithful western digital fan.