two HDD failures in 25yrs is pretty good going and as with anything electronic there is always the chance of it being DOA they don't check every single piece they build so your thinking is really wrong WD make great drives I've had many without failure i aslo have an old seagate 545MB HDD which still runs fine, but an 20GB seagate drive i owned went poo so bad the PSU would go into OCP ( Over Current Protection ) mode when trying turn it on because of it, does that mean i shouldn't buy seagates HDD's anymore... Well no as i see it it's just the sh!t happens law of our reality