All of the above is anecdotal evidence. My anecdotal evidence: I've had a Maxtor 200GB external hard drive for almost 4 years; I've had 250GB and 320GB WD externals, and the 320GB died after about a year and a half (the 250GB is still going after about three years); I have an Acomdata 1TB drive that has been fine for the four months or so that I've had it; and I have a Seagate 500GB internal in my new computer (about a month old). Only that one WD hard drive has died, and I revived it recently by tearing apart the enclosure and reformatting the drive. (It's now being used as an internal drive in my new computer.) But none of my personal experience affects the quality of any of these companies' hard drives on any larger scale. The fact is that hard drives have moving parts, and are therefore bound to fail at some point. Seagate is a reputable hard drive company with a 5 year warranty, whereas other companies generally offer 3 year warranties. The only really reliable thing to do is to get several hard drives as backups.