Modern torrents are built in such a way so that it doesn't severely kill your hard disk by constantly writing to it every second.

In fact, I think real time anti-virus scanning/protection will cause WAY MORE damage to the hard disk as it might be configured to scan every file. But still, haven't heard anyone complaining that anti-virus killed their HDD So, I would say if you use your hdd as you should, it should not shorten your hdd lifespan considerably.

I monitored one of it (Smart Defrag by IOBIT). It takes like 1-2minutes to 'analyse' my tiny hard disk and only 10 seconds to defragment (due to low fragmentation rate)

And while it was doing that, it was definitely putting high load on my hard disk based on MBs read and write per second. Manual defragmentation is better in my opinion, unless you are adding tons of new data constantly around the clock and manual defragmentation is too much of a hassle.

Think of it this way. Turn on computer - hard disk turns on for a second then losses power or continuously get unclean power, ripples. This will kill any electronic component in a computer

No, torrent programs ultilises ram caching to reduce writes to the hard disk. Torrenting 24 hours a day for months won't kill the hard disk.

Depends on the damage. File system damage but still physically functioning hard disk can still have a chance to be recovered by recovery software. IF the drive cannot even start (mechanical failure), then recovery software won't help, need to resort to data recovery services

If your hard disk has just a few folders, try ZAR, select recover 'current files' (demo version limits 4 folders per recovery, then need to rescanning and recover another 4 folders...)
Also note you need space to put the 'recovered files' onto another drive that is not the 'problem drive'

This post has been edited by adbacc: Aug 22 2011, 11:49 PM

You put the laptop sideways and use the screen to balance? I think this will put strain on the screen joints.

Usually external hard disks are internal hard disks + casing
Toughness, thus probably rely on the casing itself.
Consider a big flash drive if you need to carry it with you and don't need so much space (eg 16-32GB)

The internals of the hard disk is not user accesible. The simple act of opening it in a normal environment is almost a sure way to kill it.

Try running WD Lifeguard on that drive and see what it tells you to do. I think it has to be sent to Singapore for RMA...