Does Bit torrent downloads damage Hard disks ?

Your hard disk died because it was used very agressively during those 5 years. I think you know the factors involved because you mentioned the 2 culprits that would cause a hard disk to die a little early. For example...

Never ran a defrag: This would have forced your hard disk to access individual files from 100's of different sections on your hard disk. SImple things like viewing a JPG image may have required your hard disk to retrieve that image from 100's of different "fragments" just so it can view it on the screen. This happens in milliseconds, but the point is that the drive would have been accessed in hundreds of different sections, and therefore wearing out much faster than average. Had you ran a defrag once every 6 months, that JPG image would have been reconstructed in just one fragment on your hard disk. The defrag program would have collected the 100's of different fragments of that JPG and put them all together in one fragment. That is just one example...mulitply that by the other 1000's of files that your computer would have accessed throughout the 5 years, and you can see why it was worked to death.

Minimum amount of RAM: Means that when Windows runs out of real RAM, it uses your hard disk space as "virtual RAM". It sounds like it was probably using this virtual RAM all the time because 5 years ago programs were not as demanding as current ones are (anti-virus, 100's of toolbars, etc). Virtual RAM is one massive file located in the root directory of C drive (also called a Page File). Since you never ran a defrag, this Page File would have been heavily fragmented as well. See paragraph above about the implications of heavy fragmentation.

The ways to extend the lifespan of a Hard Disk is to use plenty of real RAM, defrag once every 3-6 months (or if you just installed a program), and try to keep at least 20% of drivespace free.

As for your bittorrent program...that wouldn't have contributed to your hard disk problem. It was mainly because of the heavy fragmentation and constant Page File access. And I agree about uTorrent being better (as someone else mentioned).

"Also , my harddisk has been constantly running on 90% usage capacity for the past year, is that too much ocuppied space for it to function properly. Almost never ran windows defrag before"

That right there is your problem. With decreasing free space, the level of fragmentation increases drastically. 5 years without a defrag, and 90 % disk usage means that your computer would have been a mess. Fragmentation greatly stresses out the drive since the head has to move many more times to read a fragmented file than an unfragmented one.

For use on your internal HDDs, get a powerrful, efficient and automatic defragmenter like Diskeeper 2009 that defrags in the background automatically, using only idle system resources. This will ensure that your drive is unfragmented and always performs well. Diskeeper is the most powerful, flexible and effective defragger for Windows. Grab free trial versions from http://www.diskeeper.com/

short answer, no

longer answer, 5 years from a laptop hard drive isn't doing to bad, to be honest, you are right in the normal time frame for hard drives to start failing. Yes its a little short, but thats just the way they are, some just die sooner, not sure how a tech could tell how "damaged" a hard drive is, he would have had to physically open it up, which is not the easist thing to do, and as a tech, i never have. They either work or they don't. Unless you hear a bunch of bad noises from the drive, its hard to know what is actually wrong, just that it isn't working.

Drive usage isn't going to make your drive die sooner, they are spinning if your computer is on, obviously some wear and tear will happen from constant use, but I would say that would be negligible, its not something to be concerned with.

Adding more ram can help reduce the work of the hard drive a little as windows (or any other operating system for that matter) will use free space on the hard drive like RAM when there isn't enough ram for everything. If you have ever heard of virtual memory, thats what it is. So obviously, the more ram you have, the faster the computer will be (to a point) and the less work the hard drive will have to do (also to a point).

Last, why do you use bitcomet? I tried that once and it was awful, uTorrent is very very good and its very light on the system, even when going full bore sharing i hardly notice that its running. I would highly recommend it.

Downloading will not effet yiur HD, however the downloads can be loaded with viruses, and Trojans.

Did he define "Severely damaged'? After 5 years your HD, was probably about to fail anyway.

It will just slow down access to your HD.

If fact, the more RAM you have the more efficient your computer becomes, it will use RAM rather virtual memory, which is on your HD.

Don't let it get overheated, occasional defragging can mke your data easier to access, thereby, reducing wear on the bearings in the HD.

Hard To Die Torrent

I wish to ask the same question as the previous person.

Not likely.