Lanny Marcus wrote:
Questions: Is it your belief that all PATA/SATA/SCSI drives made by one manufacturer have the same MTBF? (I find that hard to believe. However, that might be the case.....) Also, is it your belief that these drives, made by different manufacturers, all have the same MTBF?
I believe that there's not enough difference to matter. There is always enough of a chance of a failure that you have to be prepared for it and pretty much all of the vendors have made bad batches. But, these days they are good enough that if you don't abuse them with flakey power or high temperatures, 80% or more will last until you want to replace the equipment for some other reason (5 years or more). The ones that fail will pick random times to do it, though.