https://www.extremetech.com/computing/report-most-hdds-die-after-almost-3-years-newer-models-are-less-reliable
The study was conducted by a data recovery company in Los Angeles named Secure Data Recovery (via Blocks & Files). Unlike Backblaze, which has hundreds of thousands of drives spinning in its pods, this study looked at just 2,007 failed hard drives. The study's crux was examining two statistics, which it counts as "predictable." These are how long drives were powered on and how many bad sectors they accumulated, as opposed to unpredictable events like natural disasters, malware, and mishandling drives. The study's overarching goal was to give folks a rough idea of what they could expect for a drive's lifetime to convince them always to back up their data.