The data presented in the article only makes sense if you buy a large quantity of hard drives; if you only have had a handful then you were just unlucky.
I suspect the reason why people do "burn in" tests on hard drives is to make drives that suffer from early failure ("infant mortality" as described in the article) fail early enough that you can RMA them with the manufacturer. Apart from that, I don't think there's much you can do to improve your chances.
I suspect the reason why people do "burn in" tests on hard drives is to make drives that suffer from early failure ("infant mortality" as described in the article) fail early enough that you can RMA them with the manufacturer. Apart from that, I don't think there's much you can do to improve your chances.