I have a WD as an external. They must make drives that work better when they aren't used much I guess. I bought it in like, 2008... Still working very well for me, and I usually have it sitting in my purse. I think our machines primarily have Hitachi/Samsung brand ones. I'd have to check. I have some that originally came with Windows 98 and are running XP.
. Lots of old Macs that have old drives preinstalled with System 8 too.
3D games run hard drives really hard I do believe. I hear about people's graphics cards and hard drives busting because of WOW and other games. All I know is that my computers have always gone crazy when running them, almost to the point of being unbearable. SSD drives are apparently a step forward in that, but are too expensive at this point.
I like to tinker too, just mostly the stuff inside the machine since I'm horrible taking things apart. I still need to fix my 2006 MacBook Pro as it's sitting there clinging for its life.