The IBM Deathstars... I mean Deskstars were good. Only 11 out of 12 I installed went bad. I still have that HD somewhere.

Never had issue with WD, the worst I've had from them was a 1st gen raptor that died after a short 2 years.

Too bad - one more competitor gone. I like my Hitachies. They work well. Fujitsu is another good one.

Heh... I have an Hitachi right now... they're gonna go instinct by now? That's sad.

WD = Best Hard drives ever. I only swear by WD now. The Hitachi one I have was given to me so, don't question ^_^

A friend asked for help recently when the Hitachi drive he was running "bit the dust"! I gave him an old WD but then the board let go so I set him up with one of my old XP cases for the time being.

WD will certainly make improvements when the new (former)Hitachis are seen. It will interesting to see how those stack up in comparisons.

Only issues we had with WD were a few 150Gb Raptors.
Had more problem with Seagate, though that was years ago.

I replaced a Seagate on an old '95 Packard Bell a decade ago to get that running again but when first getting into custom cases even earlier a specialist pointed me at WDs which have been run since.

Over all those years a pair of old ides stuffed and that was about it. Never OS a Green Power model however. That's WD's enery saver series of drives good for storage/backup not performance.

With the buyout of Hitachi you stilll have to wonder which way the production line leans towards for those. GP large capacity, Blue, Black edition, RE Enterprise, or a totally new lineup of models to be introduced if not simply expanding their production base.