The old IBM drives used to be very good, I had a 15gb one which survived a good hammering but the larger capacity disk were totally unreliable. Sure they were fast but what good is a fast disk if it gives up after a few months. I had a 40gb go on me after less than two weeks
. I also had another 60gb IBM disk go belly up three times in one year causing me to lose all my data three times
I was going to bin it but decided to use the three year warranty and get a replacement which I now use for backups. I did read something about the large capacity IBM disks that they were not designed to be left on for a long period of time so if the PC is on for only a few hours they seem to be reasonably okay, that's why I use it as a backup because it's on for less than half an hour. As most people seem to agree, do not touch Hitachi as they are just IBM disks
Seagate disks seem to be the most reliable followed by Western Digital. I have both and not had a single problem with either one.