Western Digital, Seagate and Fujitsu have all made faulty batches of drives in the past, which have failed after 1 - 2 years of use. Quantum used to have problems with the spin-up speed in A600s & 1200s.
Choice of a hard disk is going to be on what interface can be found (chances are an old interface will come with a drive anyway), and no one manufacturer is perfect! I've replaced about 200 Fujitsu 10Gb IDE HDDs with Maxtor 20Gb ones in this last year (supplied under warranty).
