I’ve taken apart a bunch of hard drives both at freegeek and my own. It is not unusual for the orange tape to have flaked off. I just now found out what the stuff was. This is the tape with electronics embedded in it. I don’t know if that is what caused the hard drive crash but it could have. KAPTON is also being blamed for aircraft crashes.Hard drive platters are mirror polished that tarnish quickly when they are removed. I would expect ozone to attack the aluminum and coatings as quickly as the KAPTON. I generally get a year out of a laptop.I will then put the old hard drive in an enclosure and put that in plastic. I use them only for backup but still they will only last a few years. If you want something for a harsh environment I suggest stay away from KAPTON
Please include official reports and sources for your claims. Kapton is a product from DuPont, but mostly generic products are used. I use HDDs longer than 20 years.
zerodish, what brands of HDDs do you have experience with?
My HDDs last much longer than what you describe.
I used to get Seagate HDDs, but now I only get Western Digital HDDs because they’re much more reliable. 
Same, I’m rocking a 1TB Hitachi deathstar from 2009 with no issues
I’m running an old Maxtor 20G uATA-100 HDD manufacture date 01/01/2001 in my Linux distro-hopping test rig. It’s had antiX on it for well over a year and many hours. Somewhat slow but runs fine. Other HDD’s in removeable drive caddys on the same 'puter that aren’t much newer.
Must say I’ve seen many more laptop HDD’s fail than full-size PC HDD’s.
slmjim
Same here.
My 2.5" HDDs (that I have bought separately) are Seagate and SMR.
My 3.5" HDDs (that I have bought separately) are WD and CMR.
Even if they were all the same brand, I believe that the 2.5" SMR drives would fail the most because that’s a terrible combination.
(Don’t get SMR drives, if possible–the problem with that is that every 2.5" HDD that is over 2 TB in size is SMR.)
I’ve had at least a couple of 2.5" drives fail, though they did live for more than two years each.
I’ve never had a 3.5" drive fail so far. 
I put in 500 hours at freegeek recycling computers until 2007. Hard drives were whacked with a hammer. I recovered the magnets and the platters which I make bicycle parts out of. I have worn out 30 hard drives in the laptop. I never thought to do a correlation between the failures and the brand. But KAPTON is common with electronics embedded in them perhaps to cope with thermal expansion. HID lights have molydenum ribbon to cope with thermal expansion. Like I said I am at a loss to explain the failures. It could be the rotation of the platters and the air currents sets up a vibration in the ribbon. This should be audible. Get out your stethascope.