In my 20 years of computer support work, I've replaced only a few (fewer than ten) bad WD hard drives. Ever. I've replaced countless Maxtor, Seagate and IBM (now Hitachi) units.
Problem is, that dataset spans many years, and doesn't account for the changes in the industry.
While Western Digital was good in the old days, there was a period when I had far better reliability from Maxtor (and they were cheap, too!) and Seagate than the "slow, reliable" WDs. And I'd had good luck with Quantum, which led me to start using Maxtor more--but even though I recall when Seagate was good, the acquisition of Maxtor made me suspicious of the latter, because Seagate had fallen so far.
But perhaps WD has made a comeback?
That's interesting. I've never had a problem with any of my Thinkpad (Hitachi) drives. In fact, my T30, I've dropped twice, while it was running! Damn thing didn't skip a beat or drop a bit.
I had been buying Maxtor drives for the past few years after a bad WD drive (maybe isolated incident?).
Anyway, just did a build for my son and put in a WD; so far, so good. I’ll most likely stick with WD, since I haven’t heard many positives on Seagate.