before Maxtor got bought by seagate they were horrible drives, the failure rate was very high, they dominated the trouble in the hard drive sections without equal.
WD are decent drives, although I have had bad WD drives that were replaced by another flopper !! that ticks me off
WD's new warranty policy bugs me >>>> why should I "pay" for more than one year warranty when seagate gives you 5 years without extra cost ??
I think right now, all drives are about the same
but you have to remember, drives now days are VERY big and cheap >>>> have we all forgot the days when a 750
mb drive was $200.00 !
you can combat drive failure rate by using multiple drives and cloning or imaging software >>>>> when I have an OS drive act up or crash, I could care less >>>>> boot to one of three clones and right back in business
pull the bad drive out and plop in another $75.00 or less hard drive !