In my time doing tech support and repair, they were probably the most replaced drive to failure that I ever experienced. At least until the Deathstars came out.
I think i was buying refurbs then. as i recall the issue was with the controller boards. i know a bunch got used as cheap system/boot disks on alphas at CGI render farms, too: some of my stock came from surplus "Titanic" render nodes. I recall they had special cases for them; 24 pack pink foam crates. I had at least two of the crates...
Yes I remember those foam crates. 10% of a new crate of Bigfoots were DOA right out of the box. But I guess the ones that lasted more than a week were much more likely to last years.
