[ngoede]

The tweaktown article did talk about temperature. I think you were right to feel they were being silly with that. Temperature MAY correlate with failure but Backblaze found it did not do so within the ranges they actually see in their environment. Something about which it appears they would have more than enough data to be able to compute.

[hga]

Google's study some time ago found that temperature either didn't correlate with failures or, in the ranges they ran their machines, had an inverse correlation with failure. It would appear to be one problem disk manufacturers have largely surmounted.