[confluence]

You can use default warranty information to figure out the lower bound on useful life. Companies price the value of the warranty into the product and perform statistical QA to ensure that 95%-99% of all products released will work correctly for the length of the standard warranty. Also added warranties aren't worth the cost. Just replace the product when it breaks.

[JoeAltmaier]

Agreed. Pretty much they assume you won't return a failed drive either. Since they last about as long as the warranty, you have only a few weeks at best to remember to send it in for replacement.

I've been hit-and-miss, gotten a few drives replaced, had a few warranties expire. But pretty much every disk drive fails eventually.

Think about it - its a commodity. If it lasted much longer than the warranty, they spent too much on robustness for the price.