Allegedly, on or about 28 January 2013, Paul Smith sent:
My computer is a branded one and only 2 years old -- so, it was hard to believe that its hard disk was dying or being corrupted.
That's really not a good way to gauge it. Some time ago I swore of Western Digital drives, after having several drives die within a couple of years.
There are spontaneous failures, bad manufacturing, bad handling, failing power supplies, faults on the computer motherboard (or daughterboard, if the drive interface isn't built in), and bumps to the drive while it's spinning. The last being a self-caused fault by a lot of people, who move their computer box around while it's running. It doesn't take a large knock to damage a drive.