A hard disk drive is bound to fail irregardless to any preventative measures taken by the user.  The hard disk drive generates heat while in use and the volatility within the hard disk drive cavity ensures that failures will certainly occur within a few components.  Hard disk drive manufacturers have reduced the amount of failures dramatically by the technological leaps and bounds of current manufacturing processes.  They place a MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) on each drive based on the testing of their product.  The MTBF will represent the average failure rate for the computers hard disk drive usually in hours.  Most MTBF rates from hard disk drive manufacturers are listed or ranged from a few hundred thousand (100,000+) hours to over one million (1,000,000+) hours of usage before a failure occurs.

Disaster Recovery Group engineers do not take the manufacturers MTBF too seriously as the numbers calculated with 100,000 hours MTBF would be approximately 11 years and at 1,000,000 hours of usage is over 114 years of constant use!  The average failure times vary for these electro-mechanical devices and under normal usage most drives will last between 3 ~ 8 years.  The average designed lifespan for a hard drive is typically 5 years. That time table may be extended slightly with common IT remedies and a full helping of luck.

Keep drives cool:  Computer cases have been designed to maximize airflow over a hard drive and other key system components.  The hard disk’s spindle motor generates a substantial amount of heat during operation and that heat is absorbed by the hard disks chassis which may also have cooling fins to increase the surface heat distribution.  Many IT professionals and end-users will add fans to their computers to increase the amount of cooler air introduced.  A recommendation for doing this is to have the fans set up to evacuate the air from the computer rather than push air inside.  If the amount of air being introduced/forced into the computer is greater than the amount evacuated an ambient or limited airflow suddenly occurs.  Pulling hot air from the computer case is paramount to keeping a hard disk drive running cooler.  Having fans pull air out from the computer case will allow the venting designs of that case to operate more efficiently and typically will pull cooler outside air over the hard disk drive.

Bumping or Banging on the Computer:  A hard disk mounted in a computer case will receive any and all external inputs.  Ever since Arthur  “The Fonz” Fonzarelli established the “Technical Tap” on anything mechanical or electrical we have adopted the same mentality at times.  This is not conducive to having an operating hard disk for a long time.  The amount of shock a hard disk can sustain while off is much more then during its operation.  Our data recovery engineers have seen users initiate head taps on the media or even produce a physical head crash during peak operating temperatures by banging, bumping or lifting and dropping their computer cases.  As the heat increases in the hard disk cavity the air bearing  on which the head flies over the media is reduced since the air is thinner.  The physical agitation can have the head chatter on the media surface scouring the surface.  In certain cases this perpetuates further damages to the surface resulting in permanent data loss in the way of file corruption or even catastrophic damages that prevents any possibility for even data recovery specialists.

UPS Uninterrupted Power Supplies:  Do not confuse these with the power strips or surge protectors that are commonly available at every convenience store.  These are battery backup devices that will either maintain a continuous and constant supply of (on-line) power to the system or turn on (off-line) when power is interrupted.  The on-line UPS systems are usually more expensive than the off-line UPS systems as they are always buffering your computer from any and all voltage irregularities such as drops or spikes.  If you have frequent black or brown outs in your area this option may be very viable.  Computer electronics are designed to handle normally +/- 10% of power fluctuations and any more then that could be devastating to electrical devices.