I travel with my laptop every day and it has a regular HDD, I only replaced the original 500GB HD because I wanted a 1TB one, and the 500GB HD is functional still. Really its just how careful you are with your laptop, making sure not to bump it or drop it (even in a bag), or making sure to keep it stationary on a table. There a lot of other reasons why HDDs fail as well, like its reached its life span, drastic changes in temperature, mechanical failures, etc. SSDs will give you a performance boost, however there is a limited number of writes to a particular drive. If you reach the write limit you will not be able to write more data to the SSD, but you will still be able to read it still.
The reason for this is because the insulation which holds the electrical charge to store the information breaks down over time (which is also why you arent suppose to defrag an SSD as well because it would stress the drive to toast). I would say stick with a regular HDD unless you can find yourself a midrange (space size) SSD for a good deal. The market is definitely in favor of spinning drives (cost per GB vs $$$).