Properly informing consumers should also involve reminding them that regardless of how “reliable” a drive is, failures can and will happen. And while these drives may be worse, a backup strategy is really the only way to be sure your data is actually safe.

I am not annoyed about the article existing, it absolutely should exist. And you should keep its message in mind when buying a drive. But you should also keep in mind the value of your data, that all drives will fail one way or another, and at least consider some form of backup.