I've read this 'rumor' as well.
I had a 3GB PCMCIA hard drive go belly up on me, thank god I had backed up a week ago, and was like *shrug* it wouldn't hurt anything cuz it's dead anyway.
After putting the device in the freezer overnight I got it to be detected, when before it did nothing. Alas I still couldn't access the disk.
Which brings me to my backup suggestions. If you have enough space, I just do a weekly or monthly drag and drop backup from one drive to another. This crap about RAID and backup software is for the birds, not to mention overkill for most people. I've seen to many times, in a RAID situation, where Device A goes bad, and replicates its errors to Device B, hosing both units. Or your special backup software was configured improperly and the data you THOUGHT you had saved isn't there. With drives so cheap just have a spare, make a folder with the date, and copy it over.
Granted when you reach above 10 Gigs or so that becomes unwieldy. But this idea is more or less for your mobile files, not your mp3's or pr0n.
- Jel