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HDD is the single most often failing component in the history of PCs and laptops owned by me. (RAM is the second most often failing one.)

Quite frankly, I'm sick of these failures. The previous one happened less than a year ago. Now I think the new HDD is likely dying again.

I don't think that "less than a year" is the expected time to experience a new failure. For this reason I wonder if its not me doing something wrong?

Apart from the obvious (throwing the drive etc): Can any user actions - or negligences - damage the drive? Are there any actions to keep a "hygienie" of the drive? If yes, what are such actions?

EDIT: Until recently there were workers overhauling pavement, elevation and whatever else, and there still is this extremely noisy night club in the basement. I can sometimes feel the vibrations of our block.

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    Is your "less than a year expected time" based on a single event? On few disks? How few? HDDs fail "sometimes", so among millions of HDD users it's expected to see few customers just being unlucky with few HDDs in a row because of a sheer probability. Do you buy the cheapest HDD available at the time? or consciously choose from brands and families to help your luck?
    – Kamil Maciorowski
    Dec 31, 2018 at 15:19
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    If you are regularly having drives fail after less than a year then you may want to look at environmental factors. I've had hard drives survive up to 5 years and the drives only start failing when I changed the machine orientation after a long while in one particular orientation. Hard drives are mechanical beasts and do not like shocks, electrical disturbance or excessive humidity or dust.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Dec 31, 2018 at 15:27
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    Use an SSD instead. Don't buy the cheapest, and buy a size in excess of what you need. However, HDs should last longer than a year, and multiple failures of HDs inside the same chassis are probably caused by something. Mokubai's suggestion sums up my own.
    – MountainMan
    Dec 31, 2018 at 15:46
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    @gaazkam , BackBlaze release some statistics on their hard drive survival rates here : backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failure-rates . However, their setup is high-density, high-temperature, low-shock, high-vibration compared to your laptop. The failure modes will be different. Google also released hard drive statistics once, but declined to release manufacturer names.
    – MountainMan
    Dec 31, 2018 at 15:49
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    Something is seriously wrong if RAM is your second most failing component. I manage more than 200 PC, and have something like 2 failures a year, sometimes less. Get a good SSD like samsung.
    – cybernard
    Dec 31, 2018 at 16:13

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First, there are different types of failure. Electrical, the motor or circuit board failures. Mechanical like the head crashes, and finally data corruption issues.

I had a number(approx 4) of seagate DM series that the motors kept failing. Nothing can be done about this, except get a different model,brand,series. The RMA process takes too long and your without a hdd so suffering this process repeatedly is a unacceptable pain. Also see the backblaze link in the comments for reliability data on some drives.

I finally gave up, and started transitioning to SSD with no moving parts to fail.

Extremes in temperature, vibration, voltage fluctuation, static electricity and even dropping it.(Dropping for a laptop that is ON is particularly bad. However, these extremes are not usually encountered in a normal home.

Static electricity bad enough to be an issue would have to persistently shock you every time you touched a metal part of the case.

Vibrations bad enough to do this, you would probably feel as it would be vibrating your whole house. Sure if you have 20+ hard drives you need rubber grommets, but very few people are doing this at home.

How many PC/laptop are we dealing with here and how much do they move around? Do these devices stay inside your house?

Use either a software meter that provides access to your motherboards sensors, or get an actual volt meter with digital readout.

Make sure the 3.3v,5v, and 12v sources are all within 5% and don't experience any major fluctuations. Maybe even get a UPS and put it on the device(PC/laptop) that fails the most to see if that helps. Bad power supplies with noisy electrically current could be an issue. However, top of the line power supplies, usually can handle all, but the worst conditions. Even then a top of the line power supply would shut the computer off it protect it against extreme conditions.

I had 1 unusual case, When I touched the case it felt like I was getting shocked. That has to be resolved by an electrician, grounding fault.

I also had a case where a user bought a 3rd party laptop power supply that was so cheap and poorly made it actually scrambled the image on the projector, on the same circuit, when it was plugged in.

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    "Vibrations bad enough to do this, you would probably feel as it would be vibrating your whole house." - Wow. I wonder if this is not my case. Sadly can't do anything with workers overhauling pavement, elevation and whatever else, and with this extremely noisy night club in the basement.
    – gaazkam
    Dec 31, 2018 at 18:17
  • @K7AAY Done. ...
    – gaazkam
    Dec 31, 2018 at 21:11

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