Why Must Everything I Abuse and Mistreat Betray Me?

So my barely one year old Western Digital Raptor drive decided to bite the dust just late last week. Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING that I was currently working on was stored solely on that drive (I own an external backup hard drive, though I moronically filled it up with movies and music files a long time ago; thus making it impossible for me to back up any of my truly important and irreplaceable files). So, needless to say, I was pretty devastated and mortified when this occurred completely out of the blue (and ironically one hour before I was going to go out and buy another drive to back it up), and the prospect of having the drive professionally repaired and/or recovered was completely out of the question (sorry, but my information, as personally valuable as it is, just isn't worth $1,300). As a result, I tried something pretty outlandish and downright desperate to get my data back; I stuck the drive inside of my freezer and let it sit in there for 24 hours straight (as I assumed the crash was due to a mechanical failure, and the ice cold temperatures would help the parts inside contract and perhaps allow it to operate properly again). The next day, I quickly removed the drive (which was covered in a thin but impenetrable layer of frost) and plugged it back into my computer. At first it sounded like a malfunctioning coffee grinder, but after about fifteen minutes of praying like hell that it would work, it suddenly spun up and booted into windows. Immediately I copy and pasted all of my most important files onto my external backup; in the meanwhile, the drive heated up so quickly that all of the ice had melted and left a huge puddle on the floor (I suppose I should count myself lucky that it didn't wind up short circuiting or something-- or hell, lighting on fire for that matter). As soon as the last file had finished copying, the drive finally decided that it had had enough and crapped out again. So yeah, a happy ending, right? Well, I suppose so. But one thing still perplexes me...

THE DAMNED THING WAS BARELY A YEAR OLD-- How in God's name does a drive burn itself out in such a short period of time? Hell, I've still got a nine year old Seagate drive in another computer that runs like clockwork!