I know this publication has been doing the rounds recently on the Internet, but a recent Google study on the life of hard drives really does have some compelling information worthy of reading.

TG Daily has a good summary article of the findings which basically says, if a hard drive is going to fail within 4-5 years, it is most likely to fail within the first 8 months. To me it sounds a lot like the “lemon rule” you apply to appliances and cars… if you are going to have a problem with it, it’s going to be soon. This might help explain why retailers push the extendend warranties so much…

If you want to read the official Google publication, it is posted in the Papers section of their Labs.