HDD Death for No reason other than age?

Is it normal for an HDD to die for absolutely no reason after handling it gently and taking proper care of it for 6 years?

I have a 200 GB HDD Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 from 2004. The thing really stopped meaning too much to me after I got bigger and better HDD's in the past few years but I did use it regularly the past year and just now went to store some files on it, but it is .. seemingly dead.

Sure, it's about 6 years old but why just die all of the sudden?

When I plug it in and fire it up you can hear a "moan" and than a hundred thousand screaming beeps coming from it until you shut it off and hear another "moan" sound come from it.

...

But whatever, I have another 2x 250 I can format and use.

Just, why go bad over night? Head arm or spindle bearing run out of oil or grease? I even have a 20 GB disk from 1999 that works still...

Yes, it happens.

As to why, well that's going to involve a headache since manufacturers switched from MTBF (mean time between failure) to AFR (annualized failure rate.)

Given that 7200.7 have an AFR of 0.34%, then a failure after 6 years is, erm...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annualized_failure_rate

...I dunno - you read it :P

(Basically, it translates as "sometimes shit happens.")

Hahaha so true. Well thanks. What amazes me is I know of other people who have this exact same drive in their computer (same age as my drive) and it still cranks away. In fact their computer(s) have been left on for months on end at some points and the one I have has been taken care of "properly". Ha. I guess it is true that turning on and off constantly for an HDD wears out the mechanism.

Edit: Read the wiki page a bit. Meh, too much math and shit to figure out how or when a cheap ass HDD will die (backups are VERY important guys!!), but thanks anyways lol.

Yep, back up your shiznits peeps..... I just had an external HDD that died in our main office - it hadn't been used in a month or more and from what I was told couldn't have even been accessed more than 20x over a couple years, but it just gave up the ghost out of the blue.... so, yes, the proverbial horse apples do splatter on all of us sooner or later. :/

This is exactly like someone who says "I know of people with the exact same truck/car that I have, with more miles on it, and their transmission never blew up."

Shit happens. Randomly.