My experience with hard drives.
Seagate - good for a year or so, then develop bad sectors.
IBM - Good, and quiet, but overpriced.
Western Digutal - Good, but have seen controllers go bad or bad sectors after about 18 months.
Maxtor - Most heavily used that I buy and very reliable, and cheapest to buy too.
I have 4 Maxtors:
Replaced the Seagate in my Dishplayer to a 40GB Maxtor
Have an 30GB/7200/ATA66 main drive - 80GB/5400/ATA100 secondary/storage drive in my main pc.
And a 30GB/7200/ATA100 in my wifes pc
And a WD 30.2GB/5400/ATA66 sitting on my shelf as a spare.
It will probably sit there, unless I decide to add it to my wifes pc.