maxtherabbit wrote:
obviously I didn't mean "forever" literally, but I do think that a 10yr old working drive is quite likely to become a 20, 30 or even 40yr old working drive
Obviously only working 10 years old drives can become 20, 30 or 40yr working drives, But I have a problem with that "quite likely".
The statistics captured at very high samples shows that the like-hood of failure is significantly higher as the drive gets older. And once you reach 3 or 4 years (depending on source) the failure rate starts to grow exponentially. A drive a this age is actually more likely to fail than the very high likehood of early failure due to manufacturing defects.
Your argument that it survived so long so it will work fine could work, but only during first 3 years of drive's life or so.
If you have a working 20+ drive, you should be thanking God every-time you successfully start it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve