Hard disk drives (HDDs), more than most other electronic components, experience degradation in performance and eventual failure when subjected to temperature extremes that are often found inside digital home communications terminals (DHCTs) or other consumer products. The chance of failure is higher in proportion to the amount of hard drive activity at higher temperatures. Accordingly, once the HDD's platter and read/write heads begin to degrade, the resulting data errors cause the drive to work harder in an attempt to recover the errors, and this excessive activity increases the chance of even more degradation. There is a need, therefore, for systems and methods that decrease the HDD activity at appropriate times in order to increase the lifetime of the HDD.