I always believed that a hard disk should not be mounted upside down. That is, with the controller pcb on the top. Sideways is ok, but not inverted.
Anyway, my brother in las asked me to take a lok at his computer. He's taken it to two shops and they told him the RAM is faulty, and so is the disk.
The disk is, and always was, inverted.
You can tell from the warranty sticker that it was built that way. Could that have killed it?