[possessed]

Every brand of harddrive has a certain failure rate. I know this sucks to digest, but the same is true of CD's and DVD's. With that said, I've personally owned Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor etc and only one drive has exhibited any problems (it's still good but SMART said it was failing) and it got shelved. As far as discs, I've found that quality discs stand the test of time over cheap discs.

Now that I've rambled on......Use a brand name hard drive like WD, Seagate or Maxtor and you shouldn't have a problem. Just keep them away from the pets and basement floods and you should be golden.