I used to work for Burroughs and they had a
computer that used 8"
 floppys that spun continously.  Burroughs said to replace the disks every
 100 hours.  I have no idea how long they would actually run before failing.
  Does anyone know?  I have a CPM machine that spins it's 5 1/4" disk
 continously but I haven't run it enough for a disk to fail. 
I have 8" on my CPM crate and that spins 100% (most 8" do) with the head
loaded and I have disks that are years old (thousands of hours).
I also tend to run the motors full time on 5.35 drives to save spin up
time and hed load time (it can save a lot of delay!).  I haven't had
problems with media failure that was related to doing this.
A dirty or damaged head however can kill a disk in moments as it can
lterally scrape the media off!
Allison