No, it doesn't take years and the testing is performed, roughly, as I just described it.
They build a test rig with 10,000 drives which they run continuously producing a total "drive hours" count and then wait for the first one or two or ten drives to fail.
X failures / 10,000,000 drive-hours will give you your MTBF, etc. ... and only takes ~40 days given a 10k drive test rig.
Yes, this is one of the hacks they use that are fundamentally inaccurate due to confounding variables like bathtub curves and different issues causing early failures and long-term failures...
Because, otherwise, they would need to run those drives for years and years with reasonable cycling and read/write pressure to report accurate numbers based on real world failure rates in real conditions.
Because, otherwise, they would need to run those drives for years and years with reasonable cycling and read/write pressure to report accurate numbers based on real world failure rates in real conditions.