Metchosin -

There's really no significant "mechanical" difference between Mac and PC hard drives. The same guys pretty much make them all.

You are probably just a victim of random statistical failure here. - As in the bread always fall butter side down in my house, but I have a friend in whose home it wouldn't dare land any way but butter side up.

The one thing that most commonly causes of "premature" hard drive failure is moving the computer while the drive is running. This can include moving it while the drive is turned off but is still "coasting." Even if you don't relocate the machine, just "scooting" it out of the way carries some risk.

Note that the warning on movement does apply to laptop/portable devices, although they do use significantly more rugged drives. The worst condition is a "sharp bump" or vibration.

The last time I looked - which admittedly was some time ago, the drive manufacturers quoted "MTBF" (Mean-time-between-failures) for hard drives in the 10K (10,000) hour, 30K, or 100K range (depending on which brand of statistical lies they prefer). A year is, roughly, 6K hours. This means that on the average, half of all hard drives should die in about a year and a half. They seem actually to do somewhat better than that - my average is about 4.5 yrs (1.5 to 11 years spread) on the ones I've driven until they crashed.

John