MacBook Hard Drive Failure - Any answers?

Question

I am looking for a technical response as to why the hard drives on the MacBooks seem to be failing. Could someone please provide a detailed explanation of the reasons that hard drives typically fail, and more specifically to notebooks and Apple notebooks? I am curious as to why my hard drive may have failed two days ago.
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Answer 1

Joel C. wrote:
Typically a hard drive almost always is the weak link in any computer. It's the most "mechanical" of pieces. Just think there's platters spinning anywhere from 4800 to 7200 rpm's which is anywhere from twice to almost three time as fast as a typical car motor runs down the highway at 60 mph.The arm is seeking data within mili-seconds.
The heads are mere nanometers from the platter surface. They could be placed further away from the platter at the cost of data density.
I've read that the speed of the platters along with the distance from the read/write heads are about the equivalent of a 600 MPH jet aircraft travelling mere micrometers from a canyon wall.
All of this leads to something that's just more prone to failure than say a RAM chip which more often either works or doesn't right from the point of manufacture.
Hard drives are always near failure. That's the nature of the market demands for high capacity and performance at low cost.
As far as warranties go, the manufacturer sells OEM drives at a discount with the knowledge that the OEM takes care of replacement within the machine's warranty period (typically a year or two). Aftermarket drives are sold with full warranties backed by the drive manufacturer (3-5 years seems to be the norm).