WD, Samsung and Seagate are nice. Hitachi depends a little on which you get. The 2,5" seem to be worse than the desktop actually which helps a lot to kill their reputation.
And I had the same problems with Maxtor. 2 weeks past its 1 year warranty it died. nearly 200GB data lost.
I've 4x Samsung HD501IJ 500GB SATAII as Raid-5 in here, no problem at all and the first 2 of those 4 have been in use for 14 month at 12-24 hours a day as raid-0 + raid-1 intel matrix raid back then.
And I had the same problems with Maxtor. 2 weeks past its 1 year warranty it died. nearly 200GB data lost.
I've 4x Samsung HD501IJ 500GB SATAII as Raid-5 in here, no problem at all and the first 2 of those 4 have been in use for 14 month at 12-24 hours a day as raid-0 + raid-1 intel matrix raid back then.