Drives of the day were power hungry and ran hot. Heat
is a killer.
Yes, certainly heat is why these drives go onto a shelf working and come
off of it broken with servo and head amplifier problems at an astonishing
rate far higher than their contemporary brethren.
It also helps answer my question of common failure modes- surely, it must
be the refrigeration on the drives that fails while it is on the shelf.
Perhaps the freon slowly leaks.
Thank you for this insightful response.