I understand lots of people have problem with Maxtor, but until one fails on me, I will continue to buy their products. I've owned several 10GB Maxtor drives, and one 80GB that I currently use now. All of them have worked as expected.
I will continue to buy Seagate drives as well. This is the first problem I've had, and I am expecting my replacement drive to function OK.
Of the most notable brands of hard drive I've seen fail, either my own, or someone else's, would be IBM, Western Digital and Fujitsu. That being said, I still run Western Digital drives.