Glenn Brensinger at Small Dog Electronics:
The most common reason drives fail is a cheap component. Hard drive makers are constantly trying to lower their prices, and the sad fact is that the drive components don’t care whose brand name is on the drive. Whoever made it, the drive was made with components from the lowest bidder. It doesn’t matter who sold the system—HP, Dell, Apple, Sony—they all use hard drives manufactured by another company who had to cut costs in order to get the contract. Apple makes every attempt to use only the highest quality components in their systems, but to say that a hard drive will never fail simply because it’s in an Apple computer is wishful thinking.