Failure rates are still likely to be low (<5% per annum) I've only ever bought five external drives in my lifetime. Incidentally, all of them have been "shucke

Failure rates are still likely to be low (<5% per annum) I've only ever bought five external drives in my lifetime. Incidentally, all of them have been "shucked" over the years, and none of them have failed. They vary from 3-5 years old. In fact, the only two drives I've had fail on me were OEM packaged, so based on my anecdotal, statistically insignificant personal experience you could even say the opposite, that external drives are more reliable than their OEM counterparts. You never know. Perhaps the additional packaging prevents damage to the drives in transit, and the process of installing software on the drives (as I believe some manufacturers do with external drives) provides another opportunity to quality check the drives.