One of these days, when things slow down, I might cull data from my notebooks and chart the number of megabytes of hard disk that have died on me over time, with the cost per megabyte on a separate axis.
From memory: Several years back I fried a 6Gb Western Digital and an 8Gb IBM, both due to flakey power in the building (cheap bastards wouldn't provide UPSs). Two years ago I "lost" 6Gb when my work laptop was stolen (from work). Last week it was a 10Gb Quantum Fireball that would periodically decided that it didn't have a track zero (Linux box go *poof*). This was replaced with a 60Gb IBM DeskStar, for the princely sum of 85USD.
