Are Drives More Prone to Failure Now?
A lot of this has to do with the construction and use of hard drives. Most consumer computers were used only few a few hours per day. This meant that the drives did not have as long of continuous use that increase factors such as heat and movement that can lead to failures. Computers are much more prevalent in our lives and are being used for longer periods. This means that drives are likely failing more frequently due to heavier use. After all, a computer used twice as long as another will generally have a hard drive fail twice as quickly. So this hasn't really increased the failure rate.
Of course, factors such as the increase in data density and number of platters may also be contributing the the chances of hard drive failure. The more parts and the tighter the density of the data on the platters means that there are more things that can potentially go wrong to cause data loss or a failure. To counter this though, technology has been improving. Better motors, chemical composition of the media and other materials means that failures that used to happen due to these parts are less likely to occur.
There is no hard evidence that failures are occurring more frequently. From my own personally experience, I have not seen an increase in the number of drives failing, but other people that I work with have seen a fair number of drives in their computers have problems. This is anecodotal evidence though.
Warranties may be a good indicator of how the industry is dealing with reliability. After the dark days surrounding the infamous Deskstar problems, many manufacturers were reducing warranties. Before this the typical warranty was three years in length, but many companies switched to one year warranties. Now companies are typically offering three to five year long warranties meaning that they must have confidence in their drives as they are costly to replace.
What to Do in Case of Drive Failure?
The biggest problem with a drive failure is the amount of data that can be lost. With the increase in the number of digital devices that we use and resulting data being stored on our computer systems, it is much more disruptive to our lives to have it destroyed. Data recover from damaged drives can range from several hundred dollars to several thousand. Data recovery services aren't flawless either. A head crash will likely remove the magnetic media from the platter destroying the data forever.
There is no real way to prevent a drive failure either. Even the most reputable and reliable brand can have a drive that fails rapidly As a result, it is best to try and plan for an event that will cause the primary data drive to fail with data backups. There are a wide range of backup methods available to use. For some tips on this, check out the About Focus on PC Support Guide's Data Backup articles.
One simple tip I like to suggest to people is portable hard drives. They are fairly inexpensive and due to their limited use, are less likely to fail when properly stored and handled. External hard drives are available in the exact same capacities as the desktop drives because they often use the same drives. The key is to only use the drive when backing up data or restoring it. This reduces the amount of time it is used and lessen the chance of failure.
Another option open to users is to build a desktop PC with a version of RAID that has data redundancy built in. The simplest form of RAID to setup is RAID 1 or mirroring. This requires a RAID controller and two identically sized hard drives. All data written to one drive is automatically mirrored to the other. In the event of a failure of one drive, the second drive will always have the data. For more information about RAID, check out my What is Raid article.
Conclusions
Hard drives in general are very reliable, but with the increasing amount that we use our computers to store the data from our lives, the more catastrophic it becomes to have that data be lost from a drive failure. In general the drives are not failing any faster than they have in the past, but with the increasing use of the drives, they are reaching their expected lifespan sooner. Because of this, it is important to be prepared for such an incident by planning how to store your data in multiple locations to avoid data loss.
