The physical layer of a hard drive is a spinning disc and a pivoting head, as long as the head doesn't collide with the disc I have no problem believing the life expectancy of an HD is based on the magnetic fields, an area where I think human knowledge is perhaps a little primitive compared to the mechanical spinning of discs, invention of the wheel etc.
IBM shipped harddisks that looped back to the beginning of the media for months before someone nailed the bug in their bios, would be kind of funny if vista had the same overrun, only apparent on nearly full partitions, around the 2^n gig marker...
IBM shipped harddisks that looped back to the beginning of the media for months before someone nailed the bug in their bios, would be kind of funny if vista had the same overrun, only apparent on nearly full partitions, around the 2^n gig marker...