Google Playing Hard Drive Mythbusters

Looks like Google did their own version of Mythbusters, this time claiming that the myth behind high temperatures causing hard drive failures is just that, a myth. I wouldn't just turn off all my fans by my hard drive, but it's good to know since HTPC's are notorious for having less than stellar cooling for some components, HD's included.

Moreover, in general, lower temperatures (about 20 degrees centigrade)
produced higher failure rates. "The figure shows that failures
do not increase when the average temperature increases," the paper
noted. "In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower
temperatures are associated with higher failure rates.
Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal
of this trend."

Read the rest here.