Hard drives, whether in your laptop or PC or independent, can and do go wrong but the failure need not be disastrous if you take precautions.
These measures are very simple and often there are inexpensive ways to protect all your data (documents and files).
It is essential that you do this whatever you use your laptop or PC for.
A few years ago the cost of backing up data was prohibitively expensive for all but business users but like many things associated with IT and computers, the costs have tumbled in recent years and now everyone can afford some kind of data back-up protection.