For the past couple of years, my main source of information has been:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/8...s-rates-6.html
I have never really seen much other data published (there was an article about hard drives that google used, but they never mentioned specific brands, just information like temperature was quite a big factor (both too hot and too cold killed off drives quicker...)), and also stuff like: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/1...ightingale.pdf
Again, doesnt really mention brands (apart from very vague 'branded' vs 'white box' terms), but again contains some useful information, and some more obvious (overclocking decreases stability, who would have thought!).
Heres my question. Do your individual experiences dictate your next purchases more than larger collected samples like the top link? I know a lot of people who will have one hard drive die and then proceed to claim that brand is awful Despite the knowledge that my individual experience with past products has no bearing on reliability, Im sure I still suffer from a subconscious bias.
Also I would be grateful if anyone had any other sources that publish failure rates or something similar.