I have a pair of Maxtor drives right now. 320GB and a 160GB. My 40GB is by WD. They're all ATA drives and they work fine. Granted, I just got the Maxtors within the last few months, so they had better work fine.
Losing data is not something I take lightly, having lost 2 EP's and countless tracks to drive failures. You guys who lost your work need to start burning your stuff to CD or DVD and storing those backups properly. Backing up to another hard drive is OK in the short term, but realistically your chances of losing your work is just as high doing that as it is by not backing up at all. This past weekend, I dusted off backup CD's that I made back in '99 and pulled tracks and design work off of them that I had long since forgotten about. That could be any number of you if you burn your shit.
Keep DVD backups of your work. And... Seriously... If you can afford to do it, back up to tape as well. Tapes have a 20-30 year shelf life, if you're truly serious about your work, that's where you back it up. Screw all this other shit. Tape is proven like nothing else. Yeah the shit is slow (23GB/hr), but at least you can recover your work. Backup to DDS-4 (DAT) at a rate of 40GB (compressed) for $7 per tape. AIT and DLT cost more, Travan is cheap but holds far less.
For those that recommended Glyph and Lacie hard drives... Are you aware that they do not manufacture hard drives at all? Those same drives that y'all are complaining about just might be the same drives in those Glyph and Lacie backup units.