My Apacer AS340 120 gb is lousy too : bought in 3-17, longest usable time for Win 8 installed ( @ front of storage*area ) was just 6 mth. I had to install Win 8 on different parts of * to try find a more durable location : some parts lasted just 5 days, now I use a location 82 gb from front ( = left side of Win 8 Disc Management chart ), I had to repair this partition 20x since 15-6-18 but it's still usable.
6 data files stored turned bad, & I had to re-enter data, wasted ~4 hr.
I put silver paste on its base plate & a ( AMD, Barton ) hsink ( with a fan ) below plate : hsink will warm up a bit if no fan cools hsink, this fact proves that heat can be extracted from a plastic plate too.