New
#21
All brands have had bad runs of various models, some worse than others. It'd be good to check some reviews for whatever brands/models you narrow it down to. Here's a diagram from Wikipedia that I think is fairly accurate regarding who's who in the HDD business:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...solidation.svg
But I would not go just by brand name. That guarantees nothing. I've never had a drive fail, and at least a dozen are almost a decade old (or older) and still going strong (of course any one could drop dead tomorrow). A mix of Fujitsu, Samsung, Seagate, WD, Hitachi, Toshiba, maybe a couple others as well. About the only brand I've shied away from for any length of time was Maxtor, but that wasn't from personal experience, it was more about the negative reviews/comments I had read during the time. It may not have been a truly legitimate denial.