Just weeks out of warranty my Western Digital Green 2TB hard drive died. Here are some of my thoughts and findings while trying to find a new replacement drive.

The Western Digital Green drives, which are supposed to be "energy efficient" and "quiet", have a bit of a poor track record. It seems the drive powers down when not in use, and spins back up when you access it (but this causes a delay). All this stopping and starting is likely a cause of some wear and tear. I wont be buying one again.

BackBlaze (a "cloud backup" provider) publish "Hard Drive Reliability" stats which shows "HGST" hard drives as one of the the most reliable. Unfortunately HGST are now owned by Western Digital, but there is hope... "In May 2012, WD divested to Toshiba assets that enabled Toshiba to manufacture and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for the desktop". Apart from this the Toshiba drives fare rather well anyway... so my next drive will be a Toshiba 3.5".

There's enough evidence to suggest that vibration negatively affects hard drives - possibly even just the vibration caused by a human shouting:

So vibration is bad for hard drives, very bad. After some searching on eBay I found a decent looking "shock-absorption hard drive bracket" for about $10. It fits in to a 5.25" drive bay and provides a 3.5" bracket supported by multiple rubber pillars/bungs that should help to absorb vibration:

I'm definitely willing to risk $10 if it prolongs the life of my hard drive (or more importantly the data on it). I figured it'd probably be useful to reduce as much vibration in my machine as possible, so also found "PC Case Fan Anti vibration gaskets" and "PC Fan Anti vibration screws/pins" for the case fans (moving parts being the cause of vibrations). I'll likely update this post once all have arrived and been fitted :)