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Rich Castagna, Editorial DirectorAs far as the repair profile, this information is typically a little harder to get since vendors are not always eager to reveal some of the possible quirks about their products. You may have better luck looking for comments on user forums.
A word of caution about MTBF ratings, although there is some science behind them, these numbers are usually calculated from repetitive tests that emulate use over time or use generic failure history data for components such as circuitry, drive motors, mechanical components, etc. For example, when a certain device is rated with a MTBF of 250,000 hours, this means 28 years! It becomes obvious that the device was not actually tested for 28 years before it failed.
Read Doug Owens' answer to this question.
This was first published in September 2004