1. A method of improving data durability in a data storage system, comprising: determining a hardware failure risk indicator for each of a plurality of data storage elements; detecting a temperature increase in at least one data storage element of the plurality of data storage elements; determining whether the detected temperature increase satisfies a threshold; upon determining the threshold is satisfied, updating the hardware failure risk indicator of each data storage element associated with the temperature increase; upon determining the threshold is not satisfied, maintaining the hardware failure risk indicator of each data storage element associated with the temperature increase; modeling system level data durability for varying combinations of quantities and distributions of replicas for each of a plurality of data objects among the plurality of data storage elements; identifying an optimum quantity and distribution of replicas for each of the plurality of data objects based on the modeling; and storing one or more replicas of the first data object on one or more of the plurality of data storage elements based on the identified optimum quantity and distribution of replicas for each of the plurality of data objects, the identified optimum quantity and distribution of replicas for each of the plurality of data objects being a function of the hardware failure risk indicators for each of the plurality of data storage elements.